Page 62 of Hollywood, Ending

I remember Ellen telling me it had to be a setup, that it was simply too good as press. “I don’t know. That’s above my pay grade.”

“I want to write about you, Kai. But I also want to write about the machine that is making you a star. And I’m curious if you knew that Allen Marksville was a plant, placed there to make you look heroic when you threw him out of that car.”

I wish Ellen could be here, but The New Yorker doesn’t let publicists tag along on interviews. “You’re saying I did it? I promise you I’m not nearly smart enough to do all that shit.”

“You’re plenty smart, but I’m not sure you’re experienced enough. But the studio has people, don’t they?”

“The studio wouldn’t do that. They’re not like that.”

She just smiles. “Fair enough. Why’d you decide to do Gods of Andromeda?”

I talk about Brian and the journey from love to power and so on, and how I was excited to work with Juniper again. But I’m still thinking about the studio, and whether they are, in fact, like that. Could be the studio. Could be Bob. Could be Juniper’s agents, or Matthew’s, or even Ellen. Could be anyone. You can’t trust anybody in Hollywood. Too many people want success too badly. And yet I’ve kind of lucked into it.

“Are you familiar with Max Weber?” Jill asks.

“Definitely not,” I respond.

“Weber maintained that there are two kinds of charisma—charisma of personality and charisma of office. Every Pope has charisma of office; only some also have charisma of personality. What is it like to have exceptional charisma of personality? Are you aware of it?”

“I mean,” I say. “I don’t think of myself—”

“So the world just sort of bends to your will and you don’t notice it?”

“Believe me, Jill. The world does not bend to my will. I don’t even know my will.”

“So you’re saying you could have what you want if you only knew what you wanted.”

I smile. “Maybe.”

_____

She asks if I want to go to MoMA, and so we do. We look at the Warhols, of course, and she asks me how I feel about them and I don’t know what to say. The truth is, Warhol leaves me a little cold. My favorite work of his is the stuff at the end he did with Basquiat, the paintings that feel less flat and superficial, but I don’t say that. I talk about visiting the Carnegie with Juniper and the curator, and I tell her everything I read about Warhol’s dying year—how he partied too much and his gallbladder hurt all the time and he felt like the world had passed him by. I say it’s hard work to stay in the spotlight, but work that Warhol felt compelled to do. She asks me if I like being in the spotlight, and I say that I like acting and I’m not good at anything else.

We wind our way into this room of Agnes Martin paintings from her series called With My Back to the World. They are just bands of pale color, but even though the room is pretty busy with people, it’s utterly silent. Something about the paintings demands quiet. I stare at one of them for a long time. The painting looks the way taking a deep breath feels. I think about when we visited the museum back in Pittsburgh, how the curator said that artists like Martin and Joan Mitchell are trying to paint what interior experience is, not just what it’s like.

When we leave the room, Jill tells me, “Martin didn’t read a newspaper or a magazine for the last fifty years of her life.”

“My kind of artist,” I answer.

_____

Later, we’re back at the hotel, having a drink in the lobby. I’m drinking an espresso martini because I know I’m going to be up late tonight; Matthew’s hosting a party. Jill is drinking a glass of rosé. Jill looks like she could be one of your friends’ moms, the kind of person it’s easy to look past.

“It’s quite obvious,” she tells me, “that the studio wants you and Juniper to be plausibly-but-deniably in love.”

I give her a vague look in response. Ellen told me they can’t quote your vague looks.

“You seem an unlikely couple, I have to say. One highly analytical person, nakedly ambitious in a way that makes some uncomfortable. And then you, a doe-eyed Hollywood newbie uninterested in the Internet and seemingly ambivalent about fame.”

“I love Juniper,” I say. “She is thoughtful, funny, and wise.”

And then I break for a moment and tell the truth. “I admire her. She is incredibly bright and ambitious, and she wants to make great art. I’m kind of over the artist who’s super cool, who’s effortlessly brilliant. That’s not real. What’s real is that artists like Juniper work incredibly hard.”

“Fair enough. Are you in love with Juniper?”

“Sometimes,” I say. I’m tired, and the espresso martini has loosened my tongue. I snap back into myself.

“Do you find it hard to distinguish between your emotions and the emotions that the movie studio would like you to feel?”