“Right.”
Franklin and Claude went off down the hall, discussing the revised production schedule. I made a note to reserve the best hotel suite in town for Mr. Greenblatt. Of course, even if itwasthe best, I was sure it wouldn’t be enough to please Mr. Greenblatt because, again, at the risk of beating this one to death, everything is always the unit publicist’s fault.
At this point, I was naively thinking that this was the low point of the day, never evenimagininghow much worse it would get.
CHAPTERFOUR
Have you ever spent much time at the Tucson airport? Well, I was there for several hours that day. It’s a surprisingly busy airport, what with the nearby air force base, and the University of Arizona, and the town itself. The town has doubled in the last ten years. It used to be a cattleman’s town. Ranchers would come in from all over the surrounding countryside, and also from Mexico, Nogales being just a short distance to the south. Now Tucson has skyscrapers and, though they hate to admit it, smog. And they have an airport that’s way too small for their needs.
I met the lawyers at noon. There were three of them, and they looked like a cartoon: three little men in identical dark gray suits with identical leather briefcases and identical stern frowns on their faces. They didn’t have much to say to me—the general feeling seemed to be that this was all my fault, a giant hunk of bad publicity that I should be held responsible for. I walked them to the limo.
Nobody said much of anything. As they got into the car, one of them looked around at the desolate red hills in the distance and breathed in the hot air, and then he turned to me and said, “Is there any way in this godforsaken hole to get laid?”
“Depends on who’s trying,” I said, which wasn’t very diplomatic. But I was annoyed. He got into the limousine, and it whisked away toward the town.
In fact, Tucson is a good movie town. The university has lots of students and lots of them are girls and they just love show business. This had been one location where there were no gripes from the crew—plenty of little sun-drenched cuties who were fascinated with everything about movies, fascinated enough to spend an evening with a soundman or an electrician. The girls were all over the Holiday Inn every night. It was an embarrassment of riches.
I went back to the snack bar in the airport, had a sandwich, and called Appelbaum in Los Angeles. Appelbaum was actually in his office. In fact, I got a certain nasty pleasure in thinking that Appelbaum had probably been forced to stay in his office all day. For once.
“This is the greatest challenge in the history of studio publicity,” Appelbaum said over the phone. “This is a unique and unprecedented event that is a first in film.”
That’s the way Appelbaum talks. He’s written too many press releases in his life.
“Well,” I said, “I don’t see what we can do. It’s in the hands of the police at the moment.”
“The challenge is there and must be squarely met,” Appelbaum said. I wasn’t sure what he meant. Maybe he wasn’t sure either, because he changed the subject. “I hate to say I told you so, but I told you to keep an eye on Williams. He’s erratic, I told you.”
“Clete is fine,” I said. “It’s McDougall who’s dead.”
“Yes, but Clete killed him, didn’t he?”
“No. Who told you that?”
“I heard Williams killed him,” Appelbaum said, “an absolutely unprecedented event in film history.”
“I hate to let you down, Sam,” I said. “I mean, there was an altercation in the bar between McDougall and Williams, but then it looks like McDougall just got looped and fell and cracked his head. So just an accident.”
“If it’s an accident, what’s all the fuss here?”
“Don’t ask me.”
“Well, they’re talking about canceling.”
“Sounds like business as usual,” I said. Studio executives love to talk about canceling a film, and they almost never do. It’s just something to talk about. They never do it because an unfinished movie is totally worthless—whatever you’ve spent on it is entirely down the drain. Of course, the finished movie may turn out to be worthless too—but you can’t know that for sure. What you know for sure is that no audience will pay to see half ofBloodrock.
“Greenblatt is talking cancel,” Appelbaum said. “Kelso is holding in there, and Robinson is somewhere in New York getting laid on his lunch hour and can’t be reached.”
“Is Greenblatt coming out?”
“He may,” Appelbaum said. I heard a munching sound. “Things are very upset here. I haven’t been able to go for lunch. I’m having lunch in, right now.”
“It sounds like a tuna-fish sandwich,” I said, just to irritate him.
“Pastrami and rye,” Appelbaum said. “Tuna fish gives you hepatitis, did you know that? Never eat tuna fish. Now listen, I want you to keep Clete away from the reporters. And if any agents show up, for Christ’s sake, don’t let them talk to the press. That’s fighting fire with fire.”
“How am I supposed to control the agents?”
“Impress them with the legal problems,” Appelbaum said. “Agents don’t know anything. If you scare them with a legal problem, they won’t know the difference. Just tell them anything to keep their mouths shut.”
