At the Movies with Governor Tom: El Cid

I mean there's long overdue, and then there's looooong overdue. El Cid--finally, at looooong last--is getting the DVD treatment. Released today, it's the first title under the Weinstein brothers' new DVD imprint called Miriam, named after their mom. In honor of the release, the ArcLight Hollywood screened El Cid last night on a brand new print in 70mm Technirama Technicolor. Man, what a treat, ya know? Mind you, I'd never seen El Cid in my life but always wanted to. It's one of those classics that you've always wanted to see, always known you should see, but hadn't gotten around to seeing because of a little annoyance called life.

What made last night extra special were the in-person guests who stuck around afterward to chat about the film. I'm not talking about anyone directly involved with making this bad boy epic. Nah, they're mostly dead now. I'm talking about their progeny. You've got Bill Bronston, son of El Cid producer Samuel Bronston. He was the main guy, who helped introduce the screening with Los Angeles Times critic Pete Hammond and then helped moderate the Q&A afterward. Then you had Nina Mann, daughter of El Cid director Anthony Mann. I also got to see Juliet Rozsa, daughter of Hungarian composer Miklos Rozsa, who scored the film. The fourth and final guest was this short stocky writer named Mel Martin. His connection to this thing was that last November he published a book about Samuel Bronston entitled The Magnificent Showman: The Epic Films of Samuel Bronston.

El Cid was based on the life of this guy named, you guessed it, El Cid. Actually that wasn't his real name. Dude's name was Rodrigo Diaz, and his claim to fame was that he was a brilliant military and political leader who helped teach the Christians and Moors of Spain how to get along. The name "El Cid" comes from the word for "chief" in a Spanish Arabic dialect. At the peak of his career, El Cid had an army at his command that consisted of both Christian and Moorish troops, something unheard of at the time. What's a Moor, you might ask? Basically a Moor was a Spanish-born Muslim of either Arabic or especially Berber (i.e. North African) descent. I say especially Berber because the word Moor comes from the Ancient Greek word for "black" or "very dark."

El Cid lived from around 1044 to 1099. Spain at this time was, to put it subtly, a God damned mess, a blood-drenched dog pile of religious quibbling of a Christian-versus-Muslim nature. Golly shucks, sound familiar? Anyway, it was even worse than that. Both the Christian and Moorish camps were riven from within with more in-fighting than an episode of The Sopranos. In other words, Spain was the geographical equivalent of a piñata, all beat to shit with cracks and divisions all over the place. What made matters hairier was that you had Muslims from North Africa who wanted to make Spain an all-Muslim nation. In a sense, Spain wasn't much different from the rest of Europe. Religious conflict was spilling the blood of just about everyone and their cousin across that beleaguered continent. El Cid, although Christian, wasn't trying to conquer all Moors everywhere. That's what set him apart. He saw that, like Christians, Moors were people too and were just trying to get through this great puzzle called life. He helped them get along, and it got him in just as much trouble with his Christian brethren as it did with the Moors.

I won't give the whole film away. At three solid hours, it's too long in the first place. And secondly, why would I want to spoil everything there is to know about this gem? Here are the basics. The film starts in the year 1080, when Rodrigo Diaz is in his mid thirties or so, which is actually about the age Charlton Heston was when he made this. First, we meet the film's villain, some warlord named Ben Yussef who lives in North Africa and wants to take over all of Spain. He just needs the help of various emirs (i.e. chieftains) who are already set up in Spain. We never see Ben Yussef's face by the way. We see his angry eyes, but the rest of his face and head are always bound up in black garb.

So anyway, while on his way to his wedding one day, our hero Rodrigo comes across a Christian town under attack from some of the emirs working for Ben Yussef. Rodrigo wins handily, but when the citizens of the town demand that he execute the emirs, Rodrigo's like, "Nah. I think I'll let them live. And not only that, I won't even take them prisoner. Y'all emirs can go on home now." The emirs are so grateful that they swear to be his ally whenever he may need them. One of them right then and there dubs Rodrigo El Cid. Obviously this act of clemency won't sit well with the high-ups in this part of Spain.

The part of Spain I'm referring to is the kingdom of Castile. Remember what I said earlier, right? Spain is a fractured land, split into innumerable independent principalities. Rodrigo lives in Castile, which at this time is ruled by this one old guy named Ferdinand. Anyway, remember how I said Rodrigo was on his way to a wedding? Well, the woman he's all set to marry is a hottie named Jimena, played by Sophia Loren. Jimena's dad is this important guy named Count Gomez. Besides being a count, Gomez is the King's Champion. I'm not entirely sure what exactly being the King's Champion entails, but put it this way, Count Gomez is someone who can talk to King Ferdinand pretty much whenever he wants.

Rodrigo's engagement to Jimena runs into a little roadblock, namely that he allowed those emirs to walk away unpunished after that battle at the very beginning of the film. I cannot emphasize enough how pissed off everyone is back at King Ferdinand's castle. Even Rodrigo's dad Don Diego, who used to be the King's Champion, isn't so sure his boy did the right thing. Still, family's family, and Dad sticks by him. Unfortunately he's the only one who does. Count Gomez demands that his future son-in-law be reprimanded in some way. When Don Diego defends his boy in front of the court, Count Gomez calls him a name or something. I forget what he says, but in the parlance of the day, he dishonors the name of Rodrigo's pop.

Rodrigo is livid. He doesn't give two shits if he's about to marry Count Gomez's baby girl or not. An insult's an insult, and it must be avenged. So he challenges his future father-in-law to a duel and promptly kills him. Naturally this throws a damper on his engagement. Not only does Jimena change her mind about marrying Rodrigo, but she plots to have him killed. 'Member those emirs Rodrigo saved at the beginning? They help foil Jimena's plot.

Believe it or not, Rodrigo and Jimena do get married, but her poor mind is a tornado. You see, Rodrigo in the meanwhile has been redeeming himself in the eyes of King Ferdinand. In fact, he even becomes the new King's Champion after winning this one jousting contest that determined the king's claim to some chunk of land. And it wasn't a Moor claiming this land, but another Christian ruler. You see what I mean by in-fighting? Anyway, so Rodrigo's become fairly popular now with the Castilians, but he did kill Jimena's father. So Jimena consigns herself to some convent out in Nowheresville where she studied as a youngster.

Meanwhile, King Ferdinand dies, and his kingdom is threatened with internal division between his two sons, Sancho and Alfonso. The main bad guy, Ben Yussef, takes advantage of the situation and has Sancho murdered. But just because Alfonso becomes king doesn't mean all's well in Castile. He has a major falling out with Rodrigo, so the ol' Cid Man goes off to his wife at the nunnery. The two of them decide to live in peaceful exile, away from all the noise. By now Jimena loves her man again. In fact, they sort of do it in this barn one night, on their way to a new life. The next morning, lying in each other's arms, they talk about the new life they'll set up for themselves, having a family, just taking it easy.

When Rodrigo steps out of the barn, he finds himself confronted by hordes of troops who want to follow him. They say he can't step down yet. Spain needs him. Yada yada yada. As you might imagine, after the night he just had, the last thing Rodrigo wants to do is get back into the military arena. But he's got all these people depending on him. So he reluctantly decides to take charge again. Jimena, meanwhile, goes back to that nunnery. This time, she's pregnant.

The years pass. El Cid has become older, grayer, bearded, and just as legendary as ever. Ben Yussef, still clad head to toe in black scarves and whatnot, has decided it's time to make landfall in Valencia, the southern most region in Spain. Valencia's already in Moorish hands, so he should be in like Flint. From there, he can sweep up Spain and make it a 100% Muslim theocracy.

Uh, I don't think so. El Cid's got other plans. First, he goes to that convent to pick up his wife Jimena, whom he hasn't seen in years. In that time she's given birth to their twin daughters, who are now five or so. So Jimena and the girls accompany El Cid and his Christian-Moorish army down to Valencia. He makes short work of the emir in charge there and takes up residence in the castle. Ben Yussef is determined, though. The stage is set for a final climactic battle on the beaches of Valencia.

That might seem like a detailed synopsis to you, but believe me, it doesn't come within a light year of doing justice to the epic scale of this film. When I heard that this picture only garnered three Oscar nominations, and didn't win any of them, I was a drop jawed. Okay, maybe it's a bit long at the end. A good 20 minutes or so could've been lopped off the Valencia sequence. But still, most of the films that win awards today don't hold a candle to El Cid.

When he introduced the screening, L.A. Times critic Pete Hammond said El Cid was the victim of terrible timing. Released in December of 1961, it had to go toe to toe with two other Academy-baiting juggernauts: West Side Story and Judgment at Nuremberg. The latter ended up winning Best Actor for Maximilian Schell and Best Screenplay Adaptation for Abby Man. But really, this Oscar season belonged to West Side Story. The thing racked up 10 trophies, including Best Picture and Best Director, both of which went to Robert Wise. Can anyone say sweep? What was lemon juice in El Cid's wound was that its leading lady, Sophia Loren, won Best Actress....but not for El Cid. That same year she played the lead in, and won the trophy for, a flick called Two Women. The three nominations for El Cid were Best Art Direction, Best Original Score, and Best Original Song for "Love Theme from El Cid (The Falcon and the Dove)". The latter two were both nominations for the Hungarian composer Miklos Rozsa. Like I said, though, it won none of those. The Art Direction prize went to--can you guess?--West Side Story. Both the Best Original Score and Best Original Song prizes went to Breakfast at Tiffany's. Henry Mancini collected both of those. The original song was "Moon River". Boy, what a time to be a movie fan, eh?

Pete also shared a bit of backstory gossip before the movie started which sort of made the movie unintentionally funny at times. During the filming of El Cid, Charlton Heston and Sophia Loren didn't get along. Well, I mean they got along for the most part. It's just that Charlton wasn't very committed to doing those romantic scenes. He'd go through the motions and everything, but he wouldn't put his heart into it. Naturally Sophia took it personally, as if he was implying something was wrong with her. Even weirder, Charlton would oftentimes not make eye contact with her during those same scenes. And again, Sophia couldn't figure out why. Was something wrong with her? "She was tearing her hair out," Pete said, trying to figure out what Charlton's deal was. In his memoir many years later, Charlton said the reason he was looking past Sophia instead of at Sophia was because he was looking toward the future. Huh? Was he foreseeing Soylent Green or something?

And the last thing Pete talked about before the lights went down was the writing, something of obvious interest to me. Bottom line? The two writers who got credit for writing El Cid didn't actually write the script that ended up being used. Fred Frank and Phil Yordan wrote this script about El Cid, right? Producer Sam Bronston and director Anthony Mann liked it enough all right, but Charlton Heston and Sophia Loren didn't like it at all. And so Sam Bronston made a decision somewhat radical for the time: He brought in a writer who'd been blacklisted to help with revisions. The writer's name was Ben Barzman. Sam didn't hire Ben because he disagreed with the blacklisting or because he was trying to stick it to the Man or anything. His son Bill, who was one of the talkers after the screening, couldn't emphasize enough how apolitical his dad was. Sam Bronston was an opportunist, pure and simple. When he had a goal, he'd bend every fiber of his will toward achieving that goal. So he hired Ben Barzman for no other reason than for his writing talent. When Ben came aboard, you know what he did? He took Fred and Phil's draft, chucked it into the wastebasket, and started all over from page one, line one, FADE IN. And so it was Ben Barzman's script that convinced Charlton and Sophia to do it, but Ben never got the credit for it. No, really, to this day that's the case. If and when you watch the movie, you'll see in the credits that Fred and Phil wrote the script, but now you know better.

Ben Barzman's widow was actually at last night's screening, but she bolted as soon as it was over. Too bad, as I would've loved to hear what she had to say about her late hubby's secret involvement and what he thought about never getting official credit for writing this masterpiece. As it was, we still had four peeps talk to us afterward. Pete Hammond stayed in his seat and let Bill Bronston handle the moderating as folks in the audience posed questions to him as well as to Nina Mann, Juliet Rozsa, and Mel Martin.

Here's an interesting fact about Bill Bronston: Besides being Sam's son, he's the great nephew of Leon Trotsky. And I tell you, he's doing a great job carrying his great uncle's political torch. Bill admitted he's an extreme leftist. In general he's very much an idealist. While still a med student in the sixties, he was already advocating universal healthcare. The Governator actually just tried to pass a universal healthcare bill, but the state legislature rejected it. Personally I couldn't disagree more with Communism as a viable economic policy, but I still thought Bill was a great speaker. His voice was very soft, almost soothing, and he was always sure to make eye contact with everyone in the audience. There was a director's chair set up for him next to the other three guests, but I'm pretty sure he never used it. He stood with his mic cradled in both hands a few feet in front of the chairs, and a little to the side too when one of the other guests was answering a question.

Bill sounds like he's the exact opposite of his father. The way both Bill and Mel Martin told it, Sam Bronston was a red-, white-, and blue-blooded capitalist. He had no interest in politics at all and just had this insatiable thirst to produce great grand epic films no matter the cost, especially to him. And believe me, it did come at quite a bit of cost. What he'd do, right? He'd sell the distribution rights before even making the movie, and then use that money to cover production costs. He also borrowed tons of money and sunk himself into enormous debt. His empire rose and fell in a relatively short amount of time, but did he make the most of it or what. Dude churned out six films of mostly an epic nature in seven years. Seven years! I mean, it took Paul Thomas Anderson five years just to make There Will Be Blood. In seven measly years, Sam churned out stuff like John Paul Jones, King of Kings, El Cid, 55 Days at Peking, The Fall of the Roman Empire, and Circus World. Good God, man. Bill was going through high school and college at this time, and it's no wonder he never got to see Dad.

El Cid cost seven million dollars to make, not a sum to look down your nose at in '61. Of that amount, one mil went to Sophia Loren, $800k to Charlton, $200k to Sam, and the remaining five mil spread out to everyone else. Seeing as how Sam literally used a cast of thousands for those huge battle scenes, and shot this whole thing on location in Spain (read: the cast and crew needed hotel accommodations for months), that five million must've been spread beyond thin.

Besides paying the people, Sam needed money for no less than shitloads of film stock. If the final cut checked in at three hours, how long do you think the rough cut was? Let me tell you what I mean. Early in the film, El Cid has a jousting contest. It's only ten minutes long or so, let's say a thousand feet of film. You know how many feet of film they used to shoot it? That one measly scene? One hundred...thousand. Yes, you read that right. The number one followed by five zeroes. For what turned out to be ten minutes in a 180-minute film. God bless the editor, that's all I've got to say.

Here's the deal with Sam and Spain. Before El Cid, Sam produced John Paul Jones and King of Kings. Both were filmed entirely in Spain. While the Spanish government was grateful for Sam's injecting all that dough into the economy, they wondered if he'd ever make a movie that was actually about Spain. So that's when he went shopping around for ideas and eventually came across Fred Frank's story treatment for an epic about El Cid. Why film in Spain at all, you ask? I mean it is a good question. At the time Spain was still a fascist state ruled by General Franco. And now here was Sam making El Cid, a movie written by a Communist. Again, Sam was apolitical. He couldn't've cared less if the Easter Bunny was ruling Spain. The reason he made his films there was that it was cheaper, plain and simple.

Still, these films were epic, and much money was needed. Thank God Sam could turn on the charm or else, even with pre-selling distribution rights, he still wouldn't've had enough. He needed investors. One of the investors he charmed the dough out of was none other than Pierre Du Pont of the Du Pont chemical company. Pierre turned out to be instrumental not only to Sam's rise but also to Sam's fall. You see, El Cid was enormously successful, perhaps not with the Academy, but certainly at the box office. It made a fortune. Unfortunately, it was the last of Sam's films to do so. The three films he made afterward all flopped. What's worse, he walked away and left Pierre to handle the monster debt the flops left in their wake. Understandably pissed off beyond measure, Pierre made it his mission in life to make sure Sam never made another movie again. Suffice it to say his mission went off without a hitch.

And so Sam Bronston's life ended on a terribly depressing note. His golden years saw him dirt poor and living in section eight housing in Houston. Then he came down with Alzheimer's. Poor Bill had to put his medical career on hold to take care of Dad until he passed away at the age of 85, just after New Year's 1994.

Mel Martin expanded on the whole Charlton-butting-heads-with-Sophia deal. First of all, Charlton had been fairly adept thus far in his career at alienating his leading ladies. He didn't treat them horribly or anything, but similar to the way he resisted establishing any chemistry with Sophia, he didn't treat them with much respect. Bill piped in at one point to talk about the makeup jobs in El Cid, or lack thereof in Sophia's case, which only exacerbated the rift between the two. When you see the film, you'll notice that Charlton's made up to look older as time passes. The real El Cid was in his fifties when he died, and that's pretty much how Charlton looks during the last hour or so, when he's in Valencia. Sophia Loren, in stark contrast, looks angelic and gorgeous all the way through the film. Charlton resented that, Bill said.

Mel also talked about how Charlton's dislike of Sophia not only influenced the course of Sam Bronston's future projects but also indirectly illustrated the lengths to which Sam went to produce his epics. With El Cid in the can, Sam wanted his next opus to be The Fall of the Roman Empire, and he wanted Charlton and Sophia in the lead roles of Livius and Lucilla. He assumed he'd get the two of them again and so proceeded to have the entire Roman Forum set built to scale. I mean that literally. Sam spared no expense to have the entire Forum reproduced exactly as it had been in antiquity. By the time the set was finished, after months of hard labor, Sam got word that Charlton had no desire to work with Sophia again, but he was interested in starring in another of Sam's projects still in development: 55 Days at Peking. So you know what Sam did? To appease Charlton? He had that entire Roman Forum set torn down, and in its place had built an exact replica of the Forbidden City. No, really, and to scale too, just as he'd done with the Forum. Amazing, isn't it? Dude let nothing stop him. 55 Days at Peking, by the way, is about the Boxer Rebellion in 1900 China. For his female lead this time, Charlton got to work with Ava Gardner. Poor devil. Sophia Loren. Ava Gardner. How did he ever survive? Oh, and for the character of Livius in The Fall of the Roman Empire, Sam went to Stephen Boyd, who'd played Charlton's childhood friend and adult rival a few years earlier in Ben-Hur.

Someone in the audience (I think it was Pete Hammond from the Times, or at least someone in his party) wondered why The Fall of the Roman Empire was a commercial failure. He couldn't rave enough about the performances of Christopher Plummer as Commodus and Alec Guinness as Marcus Aurelius, and how they were far superior to Joaquin Phoenix and Richard Harris, who played those same two characters in Gladiator. That film, of course, was hugely popular both commercially and critically. Do you remember how it swept the Oscars? It scored five trophies, and another seven nominations, including one for Joaquin. Bill said that, in his opinion, The Fall of the Roman Empire was too political and preachy. It forgot about the golden rule of just telling the story, and letting any message within the story come out organically. It was especially disheartening to Bill because he'd seen a rough cut of the film with his dad, and he loved it. There were all kinds of great scenes that actually told the story and weren't trying to shove the movie's obvious message down your throat. And then, when the final cut was released, all of those scenes were gone. Bill said he was being literal. Each and every one of his favorite scenes, the scenes that had emotion and that just told the story, was gone, edited out.

Talk eventually turned to El Cid director Anthony Mann. His daughter Nina, who looked to be in her fifties or so, had fond memories of going to Spain with Dad to scout locations for El Cid. It was just the two of them in a Jeep or something, driving all over the Spanish countryside to look at castles and whatnot. Those castles you see in the film, by the way, are real castles. Sam may have been nutty about reproducing the Forum and the Forbidden City, but he wouldn't build ginormous sets if he could use the real thing.

Mel cited Anthony Mann as a great example of how your fortunes can change for the better when you least expect it, when you're at your absolute nadir. You see, before Stanley Kubrick was hired to direct Spartacus, Anthony Mann was supposed to direct it. He lasted all of two weeks. According to Mel, he wanted Spartacus to be a three-dimensional character. You know, a real person and not just some Rambo fighter guy with loin cloths and cans of whoop-ass. Well, that latter version was exactly what Kirk Douglas wanted. And it was Kirk who got his way. Just to show you that things happen for a reason, though, being fired from Spartacus meant Anthony could now direct Cimarron with Glenn Ford and Maria Schell. And then that led to El Cid and The Fall of the Roman Empire. The latter film didn't make much money, as I've said, but it was a healthy paycheck for Anthony. Already in his late fifties at that point, with dozens of films on his resume, Anthony only made two more films after Roman Empire before he passed away at age 60.

And finally Juliet Rozsa got to talk about her father, the brilliant Hungarian composer Dr. Miklos Rozsa. Like Nina, Juliet got to go to Spain with her dad. They went well before the start of production, as her dad wanted to dive into researching just what kind of music Spaniards listened to during the 11th century. Then, when actually composing the score, Dad would sit at the piano for hours at a stretch, experimenting with various melodies that would be flavored with an 11th century Spanish style (whatever that means). Juliet said that both she and her brother entertained the idea of following in Dad's footsteps, but Miklos was just too demanding, not to speak of intimidating. Seriously, if you haven't heard of Dr. Rozsa, you should know that the man was sort of already considered a genius during his lifetime. So anyway, Juliet and her bro eventually said forget it, they wouldn't even bother pursuing musical careers. However, she did say that both of her daughters play music professionally. I think one or both play the violin. It's easier for them since their pop-pop isn't around to lay down the law.

It was midnight when the whole program was finished. Mind you, the sell-out crowd was seated by seven. Sure, I was pooped, and getting up before dawn as I do, I knew today would be a long day. Still, this turned out to be an exceptional treat. The ArcLight hadn't advertised these in-person guests, and I had no idea El Cid was only just now coming out on DVD. I'd always meant to throw it onto my Netflix queue, but as with who knows how many other classics, I just hadn't gotten around to it (not that it would have mattered). I go through my Netflix DVDs like water (I'm on the four-disc plan), but I tend to be kind of picky about which DVDs I'll actually buy. I have to be convinced that I'll want to take it out and watch it now and again, no matter how many times I've already seen it. Don't you know that El Cid now falls into that category. Forget putting it on my queue. If last night's event was supposed to convince me to go out and buy the thing, I'm afraid it worked and then some.

At the Movies with Governor Tom: Blazing Saddles and History of the World: Part I

When Mel Brooks was a wee tot growing up in Brooklyn, he had an uncle named Joe who drove a cab. The thing about Joe, right? He was a tiny man. Mel said that if you saw a cab coming your way, and no one was at the wheel? That was Joe. Anyway, Uncle Joe was pals with this doorman in Manhattan named Al. One time, when Mel was nine or so, Al told Uncle Joe that he had two tickets to Anything Goes that he couldn't use. Anything Goes had premiered at the Alvin Theatre on Broadway the year earlier and was still going strong. It starred Ethel Merman in the lead as Reno Sweeney. Uncle Joe gladly unburdened Al of his tickets and invited his little nephew Melvin to go with him. The seats were in the last row of the second balcony, but still, according to Mel, Ethel Merman was a bit too loud. Seeing this musical pretty much determined Mel's career path. From that moment on, he knew he wanted to be in show biz.

Now how do I know that, you might ask? Well how else? Mel told me. Okay fine. He didn't tell me personally. He told all of us sitting in the audience during his Q&A. That's right, kids. I saw Mel Brooks in person! THE Mel Brooks. Comedy legend Mel Brooks. In person. You don't understand, I grew up watching a good share of this guy's resume: Young Frankenstein, Blazing Saddles, History of the World: Part I, Spaceballs. When Spaceballs was on cable regularly in the late eighties, I probably saw it about half a million times or so. The first Mel film I saw, however, was History of the World: Part I. My brothers and I rented it sometime in the mid eighties and watched it like it was going out of style. Plus, again, HBO had it on a lot. That was my introduction to Mel. When I heard that Mel himself, just north of eighty years old God bless 'im, was appearing in person last night, I couldn't resist. What was gravy was that it was in honor of this double feature of what are, in my humble opinion, his finest gems: Blazing Saddles and History of the World: Part I. Actually, it was one of three appearances he's making during this five-day Mel festival at the Aero, with two films per day. Sure, I'd love to go see all ten films, but there's this little thing that gets in the way. It's called life. When I saw this event scheduled a few weeks ago, I decided I had to go on one of the nights when he was going to be there. And of those three nights, there simply was no better choice than this one. Come on now. Blazing Saddles AND History of the World: Part I? In the same night? With Mel in person? As Grant, the guy who always introduces screenings at the Aero and conducts the Q&As most of the time, said last night, if the sign outside said "Aero Hotel and Casino," our tickets would've cost $500. As it was, it only cost $10. Again, quoting Grant: "Highway robbery!"

First, they showed Blazing Saddles, right? Then Mel came up, and Grant interviewed him and all that. And then you know what Mel did? He stayed and watched History of the World: Part I with us. Can you imagine? This film had been my Mel initiation. And now I've seen it. With Mel! I don't mean to go all googly-eyed on you, but how ridiculous and wonderful can you get? It'd be like you were a U2 fan or something. And Bono and all the guys came over and listened to one of their albums with you and then talked about it afterward. Are you getting what I'm saying?

Before I get to the Q&A, let me talk a little about the films. Blazing Saddles takes place in New Mexico or some such southwestern place in the 1870s. The brilliant Harvey Korman, a regular on The Carol Burnett Show at this time, plays the shamelessly corrupt state attorney general named Hedley Lamarr. No one gets his name right, though. They call him Hedy Lamarr. Get it? No? Hedy Lamarr was an Austrian actress whose heyday was a bit before your time then. Anyway, whether you got it or not, his being called Hedy frustrates him to no end. Poor Hedy--I mean, Hedley--wants land. He's trying to grab enough land to allow a railroad to run through his state. Only problem is, the railroad would have to run straight through this one town called Rock Ridge (where everyone's last name is Johnson). Hedy--sorry, Hedley--needs to find a way to scare everyone out of town so he can get the railroad through there. How does he plan to do it? He takes one of the railroad workers, a black guy named Bart (Black Bart, get it? Oh come on, you must get that one!), and makes him the new sheriff. Never in the history of those United States had there ever been a black sheriff. This is back when they use the evil N word as casually as you and I use the word Starbucks. So Black Bart becomes the new sheriff. Hedy Lamarr of course hopes the people of Rock Ridge would rather run away than live under a black sheriff. If it were a perfect world, they'd kill Bart first, then abandon the town.

Neither happens. Hedy Lamarr apparently forgot that the notorious gunslinger known as the Waco Kid (Gene Wilder, awesome as always), who's killed more people than Cecil B. DeMille, is still being held prisoner in the Rock Ridge jail cell inside the sheriff's office. Black Bart, a "sophisticated urbanite," strikes up a fast friendship with the Waco Kid. Together, the two of them find a way to escape Hedy Lamarr's machinations. Not only that, but the townsfolk soon come to like their new sheriff. That's right, kids. Poor Hedy Lamarr, while simply trying to evacuate Rock Ridge so he can profit from the expanding railroad, ends up opening a can of nightcrawlers. The whole thing blows up in his face. But how does it blow up? Ah, that's where I'll leave it to you to watch this priceless picture.

History of the World: Part I, about 90 minutes like Blazing Saddles, isn't one feature-length story but a series of sketches taking place during certain time periods, some sketches much longer than others. Like Blazing Saddles, though, a lot of the humor comes from blatant anachronisms. For instance, upon being asked for a last request, the prisoner says, "Novacaine." The executioner's like, "There's no such thing known to medical science," and then the prisoner's like, "I'll wait."

First you've got the dawn of man, featuring a hilarious series of mini-sketches that show how man discovered singing and what have you (hint: it involves slamming people's feet with rocks). The main caveman in that is played by Sid Caesar. Does the name at least sound familiar to you? He was huge back in the fifties and sixties. In the fifties he had this comedy sketch show called Your Show of Shows. Guess who one of the writers on the show was? Mel to the Brooks. Mel wasn't even 30 yet. Landing that gig provided a huge boost to his career. In addition to Sid, Imogene Coca and Carl Reiner were two of the show's regulars. Anyway, so Sid went on to star in two of Mel's films, this one as well as Silent Movie five years earlier (Mel's follow-up to Blazing Saddles).

So anyway, after the dawn of man, you've got Mel playing Moses carrying fifteen commandments on three tablets. One of them breaks, and that's why we have ten commandments to this day. And then there's the Roman Empire, the Last Supper, the Inquisition, and finally the French Revolution. The Inquisition segment is really just this one musical number. After hearing his Anything Goes story, it's perfectly obvious watching the Inquisition bit how much the man loves musicals. He wrote the lyrics, as he'd eventually do for the stage musical adaptations of The Producers and Young Frankenstein.

If you're seeing History of the World right after Blazing Saddles, you'll recognize some of the actors. There's Dom DeLuise playing Emperor Nero. And Madeline Kahn plays his wife, Empress Nympho. And once again you've got Harvey Korman playing a guy whose name no one can get straight. This time he's Count de Monet, but everyone calls him Count de Money. One special guest star you've got in this flick is Englishman John Hurt. The year before this was made, Mel Brooks produced The Elephant Man under his production company at Fox, Brooksfilm. It was directed by David Lynch and starred John Hurt as John Merrick, a.k.a. the Elephant Man. Anthony Hopkins played his doctor. They must've liked working together because Mel got John to cameo in History of the World as Jesus during the Last Supper bit. Mel's character from the Roman Empire segment, Comicus, is their waiter. A few years later John Hurt showed up briefly in Mel's Spaceballs playing the same guy he played in Alien, the one with the alien bursting from his chest. "Oh no," he says in Spaceballs. "Not again!"

Since the Q&A immediately followed Blazing Saddles, Mel mostly talked about that. One day in the early seventies, when he was strolling the streets of New York, he heard a voice behind him say, "Need some change?" Mel turned and saw one of his writer friends who happened to be out for a stroll himself. This guy told Mel about this other writer Mel had never met before named Andrew Bergman. Turned out Andrew had an outline for a movie idea called Tex Ex, a comedy Western. Perhaps Mel would take a look at it and maybe help the guy bring it to the big screen. At first Mel was less than thrilled. Last night he said his response was: "I'm a New York Jew. What the hell am I going to do with a Western?" Just to humor his friend, though, Mel went to Andrew and took a look at the outline. He loved it and thought it had a lot of potential. So he and Andrew started writing the script together.

Let me tell you a little something about Andrew. At this time, he was in his late twenties, a full 20 years younger than Mel. He was an aspiring writer from Queens who hadn't published or produced a single word, but thanks to that one friend introducing him to Mel, that was about to change. He's had a fairly steady writing career since. After Blazing Saddles, he created the ill-fated TV spinoff of Blazing Saddles, called Black Bart, which had Louis Gossett Jr. playing Bart. Andrew also penned the scripts for The In-Laws, Oh, God! You Devil, Fletch, The Freshman, Soapdish, and Honeymoon in Vegas. For his first writing credit, though, he would have to share the credit not only with Mel but with three others.

During the early seventies, Mel was a lunchtime regular at Chock Full O' Nuts. Often, he said, he'd be in there to grab a bite when this attorney friend of his, Norman Steinberg, would show up and bug him about helping him get into the writing biz. According to Mel, Norman's signature line would be, "I'm a lawyer, but I want to be a writer. I'm a lawyer, but I want to be a writer." And he'd just hammer Mel with that refrain. Finally Mel relented and invited Norman to help him with what was still called Tex Ex. Norman joining the team meant another guy joining up, a dentist friend of Norman's named Alan Uger. Alan worked with them only temporarily before, as Mel said last night, he had to go "fill cavities." Still, Alan did contribute enough material to the screenplay to get equal writing credit with Mel, Andrew, Norman...and the fifth recruit.

This was none other than Richard Pryor, who of course would go on to become a comedy legend himself. At this time he was in his early thirties and had already been working steadily as both an actor and a writer for about a decade. His writing credits at this point included two episodes of Sanford & Son and some other TV stuff. Among his acting credits were guest-starring stints on shows like The Mod Squad and The Partridge Family. The most notable work by far that he'd done as an actor at that point was Piano Man in Lady Sings the Blues. This was about two years before Blazing Saddles. You ever see that? It's Diana Ross playing Billie Holiday. Check it out, it's good stuff. That really helped get his acting career on track. In fact, Mel really wanted Richard to play Bart in Blazing Saddles, but the suits at Warner Brothers, especially the head guy there, Ted Ashley, thought Richard's drug habit made him too much of a liability. Mel had already known Richard for a good while at this point from the New York comedy club circuit. They got along famously, which made Richard a natural fit for Mel's writing team. Last night Mel said the gravy of having Richard on board was that they could actually get away with things like the evil N word and black characters who were blatant stereotypes. Of course, as far as the Bart character goes, Richard drew him completely against type. But Richard contributed more than all that to the script. For example, remember Mongo? Richard wrote all his dialogue. And then after Blazing Saddles, he started focusing more on his acting. In short order he did both Car Wash and Silver Streak. His movie career was on track. Although we probably shouldn't talk about Superman III.

As for Cleavon Little, the man who ended up playing Black Bart, Mel couldn't say enough about how much he grew to admire him. When directing, Mel makes it a point not to eat lunch with his actors. 'Cause, you know, if you eat lunch with one actor, the rest of the cast might view that actor as being an ass kisser or whatever. Then that could lead to in-fighting and all that nonsense. So Mel typically avoids lunching with the cast. With Cleavon, though, it was different. He actually asked Cleavon if they could sit at the same table in the Warners cafeteria. If you've never heard of Cleavon Little, that's because movies weren't really his thing. Blazing Saddles was probably the highest profile film on his resume. His main thing was theater. He attended Julliard on a full scholarship, did Shakespeare, won a Tony, all that stuff. Cleavon also logged tons of TV guest spots. And then, sadly, he became another great talent gone before his time. He passed away of colon cancer about fifteen years ago, at age 53. Mel even choked up a little last night when remembering Cleavon.

One of his funnier Blazing anectdotes concerned the test screenings at Warners. In fact, no sooner did he come up after the film than someone in the audience shouted out, "How did you get away with it?!" First of all, Mel couldn't emphasize enough how he and the other four writers never believed for a second their script would ever get made. He kept warning Andrew Bergman, who came up with the idea, that a snowball had a better chance of surviving a brush fire than their script had to get produced. Because of this view that they had nothing to lose, Mel said they just went balls to the wall with the humor. Mel's skepticism during the writing process didn't have anything to do at all with Andrew's outline, by the way. He loved the idea. But at this point in his career, Mel had only directed two films, and neither made much money. He said that his first film, The Producers, only played in a handful of cities. His second film, Twelve Chairs, made, as he put it, "Thirty-six cents." So here he was, pushing 50 and figuring no one would ever let him make a movie again, and certainly not a Western satire.

But son of a bitch, Warners did let them make it, but they greenlighted it before Mel et al had a final draft of the script. It wasn't until after the film was shot that Warners head honcho Ted Ashley realized what he'd gotten himself into. It was hilarious, what happened at the test screening. As Mel described it, the first test screening was with all the top brass at Warners, including Ted Ashley. When the movie was over, Ted took Mel into another room and gave him no less than two dozen or so changes to make. Mel wrote them all down as Ted spoke. First, you can't show a guy punching out a horse. And you can't have a scene with people farting. And for God's sake, Mel, you can't have anyone saying the evil N word. You know, stuff like that. So Mel thanked Ted for his valuable feedback. Then, right after Ted left the room, he tore up the sheet of paper and didn't change a thing. Soon after, they had a test screening for all the peons of Warner Brothers, the administrative staff and what have you. The first scene in the film, right? You've got that chain gang of blacks and Asians working on the railroad. One of the Asians passes out because of the heat, and the head guard's like, "Dock that chink a day's pay for napping." Mel said that's when everyone in the audience laughed their asses off, and he knew this test screening was going to go over much better than the suits' screening.

Still, the executives didn't know what to make of it. Mel said it may never have reached a theater near you if it hadn't been for a suit at Warners named John Calley. He was different from Ted and the others in that he had a shred of foresight. He could see that this film was going to be a smash, and might even get some awards attention. He convinced Ted to release it without any of those changes. John Calley, by the way, eventually left Warners and became the head honcho at Sony Pictures. A few years ago he left Sony and now produces films with his own production company. Recent credits include Closer, The Da Vinci Code, The Jane Austin Book Club, and the upcoming Da Vinci prequel Angels & Demons.

So thank John Calley for Blazing Saddles. I obviously don't need to tell you how extremely popular the film was, and still is, judging by last night's sellout crowd. Did you know that Blazing Saddles was the first film to show farting onscreen? Weird, huh? Comedies these days have become so raunchy that we take scatological humor for granted. In addition to turning a profit, it also racked up three Oscar nominations. One was for Best Song for the title song "Blazing Saddles." Guess who wrote the lyrics for that. You know it: Melvin Brooks. Madeline Kahn scored a Best Supporting Actress nomination.

Oh yeah. Madeline "Wrath of" Kahn. Mel talked about her a bit. Her Blazing character, Lili Von Shtupp (a.k.a. the Teutonic Titwillow), was a direct riff on Marlene Dietrich from the 1939 flick Destry Rides Again. That song "I'm Tired" that she sings when Bart and the Waco Kid see her for the first time was a riff on Marlene's singing "Falling in Love Again (Can't Help It)". Mel expressed some regret that a lot of her scenes with Cleavon Little had to be edited out because they weren't exactly germane to the story. You see, in order to get rid of Black Bart, Hedy Lamarr hires Lili Von Shtupp to seduce Bart and lure him into a trap. Instead, Bart turns out to be great in the sack, and Lili falls for him and joins his cause against Hedy. So at least a few of their scenes together survived. Madeline Kahn was just awesome, wasn't she? Of course you should see her in all the Mel stuff she did, but don't forget to check out Judy Berlin, her very last picture. With Edie Falco in the title role, it came out the same year Madeline passed away. As with Cleavon, it was cancer that got her.

Speaking of Mel Brooks regulars, Rudy De Luca was at the screening last night. He didn't come up and talk, but Mel did make him stand up and take a bow at one point. He was sitting way in the back, where Mel went to sit after the Q&A to watch History of the World: Part I with us. Like Harvey Korman, Rudy cut his comedy teeth on The Carol Burnett Show, only he worked on the show as a writer. He also did writing stints for The Tim Conway Show before Mel came calling. Tim Conway, by the way, was another regular for Carol Burnett. He and Harvey Korman did some of the best skits together. Seriously. I'm sure you could find them on YouTube. They were a riot. So anyway, in the seventies Rudy hooked up with Mel and ever since has done lots of stuff with him. He co-wrote Silent Movie, High Anxiety, Life Stinks, and Dracula: Dead and Loving It. He also had supporting roles in just about all of those flicks as well as Spaceballs and Robin Hood: Men in Tights. In History of the World he plays Captain Mucus.

Someone up front asked Mel what makes a good comedian. Mel said he had no idea, that it was much too broad a question. He said you could understand how difficult a question that is when you think about the sheer diversity of comedians over the decades. How do you get from Charlie Chaplin to Ben Stiller? Both are very successful comedians but are so different from each other. One thing that always helps, Mel said, is to be a die hard fan of comedy. You gotta love it if you're gonna do it.

This led him to reminisce for a few minutes about Johnny Carson. Mel loved Johnny, loved being on his show. In fact, here's a nice bit of trivia. Did you know that Mel Brooks was one of the guests on the very first episode of The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson? The Tonight Show had been around since the fifties, but Johnny didn't take over as host until October 1, 1962. On that night the guests included Tony Bennett, Joan Crawford, Groucho Marx...and a thirty-six-year-old unknown "New York Jew" named Mel Brooks. Cool, huh? Mel was a guest on Johnny's show another four times over the next 30 or so years. He talked about one time when Johnny didn't like his tie and sort of on the spur of the moment reached over and cut it off at the stem with a pair of scissors. Mel returned the favor, and for the rest of the interview the two of them continued bantering as if wearing a severed tie were a perfectly normal thing. Mel said that Jay Leno was doing all right, but Letterman was too weird. He's never been on The Late Show because he doesn't feel comfortable watching it. Dave, in Mel's opinion, tries too hard to be funny.

The only History of the World question I remember was about Barry Levinson's cameo as the column salesman in the Roman Forum ("Columns, columns! Get your columns here! Ionic, Doric, Corinthian! Put a few columns in front, turn any hovel into a showplace! Columns...! Sir, don't touch the merchandise. All right now, columns, columns!"). If you've heard of Barry at all, it's no doubt as a director. Originally from Baltimore, his directorial debut was Diner, which he made the year after History of the World. Other Baltimore films he did include Tin Men, Avalon, and Liberty Heights. He's also directed a lot of great non-Baltimore stuff like The Natural, Good Morning, Vietnam, Rain Man (for which he won an Oscar), and lots more. He was also one of the brains behind Homicide: Life on the Street, the one-hour Baltimore-set crime drama from the nineties. What a lot of people don't know, however, is that, like Rudy de Luca, Barry Levinson came of age as a writer on The Carol Burnett Show and The Tim Conway Show. He also helped write two of Mel's earlier flicks, Silent Movie and High Anxiety. Mel had nothing but nice things to say about Barry, and he's glad he got to work with him when he did. Because as you can tell, as soon as he made Diner, Barry's career blasted off into the stratosphere.

Barry is just one more example of the level of talent Mel's been attracting throughout his career, even if it's for a cameo. That speaks volumes about his character. After seeing him last night, it's obvious that he's very much salt of the earth with his heart on his sleeve. I'm guessing it's a piece of cake to work for him because if he had a problem with you, he'd just tell you point blank instead of leave you guessing, and he'd somehow still make you laugh. More than that, though, he'd no doubt push you to succeed by pointing to himself as an example of improbable success. Yeah, Mel's definitely one of those guys who would say, "Hey, if I can do this. You can too."

At the Movies with Governor Tom: A Clockwork Orange

Tonight at the ArcLight Hollywood I caught a showing of the 1971 picture A Clockwork Orange, directed by Stanley Kubrick and starring Malcolm McDowell and all of his droogs. Now why would a first-run house like the ArcLight be showing Clockwork? Same reason they showed Metropolis last week. If you haven't read my Metropolis post, you'll see that both that flick as well as this one were shown as part of a music festival put on by the Los Angeles Philharmonic called Concrete Frequency. Concrete Frequency is, as the brochure puts it, a "multi-disciplinary series of events designed to examine and celebrate the elements that define a city, and how they are affected by, and reflected in, music." Most of this constituted concerts at Disney Hall, the L.A. Phil's home base, but they also had three films tying into it at the ArcLight: Metropolis, Taxi Driver, and A Clockwork Orange. Since I saw Taxi Driver on the big screen a couple years ago, I opted to skip it so I could see Callie Khouri in person for a sneak preview of Mad Money.

As with Metropolis, A Clockwork Orange was followed by a Q&A with Variety film critic Jon Burlingame. This time he interviewed English documentarian Nick Redman. Nick's significance to this event was that he was the one to interview Malcolm McDowell on the commentary track of the A Clockwork Orange DVD. His other credentials include a lot of documentaries about Westerns. For the John Ford DVD set Ford at Fox, he did a documentary called Becoming John Ford. Back in the nineties he did another Ford doc called A Turning of the Earth: John Ford, John Wayne and The Searchers. He's also done a few pieces about Sam Peckinpah. Back in 1996 he scored on Oscar nomination in the Best Documentary, Short Subjects category for The Wild Bunch: An Album in Montage. Since then he's done A Simple Adventure Story: Sam Peckinpah, Mexico and The Wild Bunch and Main Title 1M1: Jerry Fielding, Sam Peckinpah and The Getaway.

When he made A Clockwork Orange, Stanley Kubrick was in his forties. Most of his work was behind him, stuff like 2001: A Space Odyssey, Spartacus, Lolita, and tons more. After Clockwork he made all of four films in the 28 years before he died: Barry Lyndon, The Shining, Full Metal Jacket, and Eyes Wide Shut. Do you know what A Clockwork Orange is about? If you've seen this mind trip, the answer wouldn't necessarily be yes. Those English accents can be quite thick from a Yank's point of view. Even though it stretches north of two hours, though, the story's fairly straightforward. It takes place in near-future England. Malcolm McDowell plays a chap called de Large, Alex de Large. We first meet him at a milkbar during the film's very memorable beginning. He's not alone. You see, Alex is the head of a gang. The other three in the gang are called his droogs. Their names are Dim, Georgie, and Pete. They don't really do much except, as Alex says in the narration, indulge in a little bit of the old ultraviolence.

After we watch them in action for a bit and get introduced to Alex's home life--he lives with Mum and Dad, who have no idea what he's up to--Alex and his droogs have a bit of a falling out. The end of the first act sees them ambush Alex at the Catlady's house and leave him for the police. He gets caught and does a two-year stint in jail. The only reason he gets out that soon is because he submits himself as a guinea pig in some government experiment designed to reform ultraviolent criminals. I won't spill where the film goes from there, but suffice it to say that Alex finds himself pushed and pulled both by the government and by some resistance group trying to expose the government as criminal. In typical Stanley Kubrick fashion, the ending isn't satisfying in the mainstream three-act Hollywood sense, but somehow it fits perfectly with the rest of the film.

But you already know about Stanley Kubrick. If you've seen even one of the films I mentioned above, especially the later ones, you know that you'll always get something different and that it may not go down so smoothly the first time. So enough about Stan. Do you know anything about Anthony Burgess? The Manchester native who wrote the novel on which the film was based? Now there was an interesting chap. By the time he penned A Clockwork Orange in '62, he was already in his mid forties. Nick Redman described him as "a newspaper critic and eccentric," but he was more than that. He didn't even turn to writing until his early forties, after teaching stints in Malaysia and Borneo. Yeah, he was on the weird side. He said things like "Laugh and the world laughs with you. Snore and you sleep alone." When asked to describe his writing methodology, he said, "I start at the beginning, go to the end, then stop." But he had the most depressing childhood that the fact he could keep it together at all is a real testament to the man's mental stamina. Both his ma and his sister died during the 1918 flu pandemic, when Anthony was all of a year old. As for Dad? He was mostly an absentee drunk. Anthony, in other words, had a Grade A shitty upbringing. Then along came World War II.

It was an incident during the war, in fact, that planted the seed in Anthony's brain to write A Clockwork Orange nearly 20 years later. During a blackout in London, U.S. Army deserters mugged and beat up his wife. Remember that scene in Clockwork when Alex and his droogs just walk into that writer's house, and Alex rapes his wife right in front of him while singing "Singin' in the Rain"? Apparently that scene was "inspired" by Anthony's wife's assault, and then he wrote the rest of the novel around that scene. Another interesting little tidbit about the novel is that, while he was writing it, Anthony was convinced he was dying of a brain tumor. He churned through the sucker in a hurry so it could be published and earn his wife enough dough after he kicked the bucket. After he finished it, though, he found out that his noodle was fit as a fiddle.

Now in case you're wondering who to blame for those thick accents, don't blame Anthony, or Stan, or the English. Blame the Russians. Sometime before he wrote A Clockwork Orange, Anthony and his wife took a cruise to St. Petersburg (then called Leningrad). A lover--and quick learner--of languages, Anthony used the Russian he learned on that trip to create a sort of Anglo-Russian dialect for the novel, and by extension the movie. That's why it's so damned difficult to discern what in hell Alex is saying sometimes. He and his droogs are talking in a slang that's sort of English and sort of Russian. Speaking of language, the novel is the first time anyone used the word "ultraviolence." Since then, it's been added to the dictionary.

Oh, and on a side note, Anthony was drinking buddies with William S. Burroughs. How cool is that?!

Nick told us a funny story behind that "Singin' in the Rain" scene. When it came time to shoot that scene, the script didn't specify what song Alex was supposed to sing while he beat up the writer and raped his wife. So Stanley Kubrick told Malcolm McDowell to sing whatever song came to mind. Malcolm said he didn't know any songs by heart. Stanley was like, "Oh come on. You must know at least one song. How could you not know any songs?" So when the cameras started rolling, Malcolm sang the first tune that popped into his noggin. You guessed it: "Singin' in the Rain". But it gets even better. A few years later, at a party in the Hollywood Hills, Malcolm McDowell was standing around drinking with one of his buddies. At one point his buddy was like, "Dude! Gene Kelly's right behind you!" When Malcolm turned around to say hey, Gene turned away from him and stalked off. He never spoke to Malcolm the entire time, so irate was he about the use of that song during what's probably the most disturbing scene in the film.

Nick first saw A Clockwork Orange in January 1972, about a month after it opened, at the Warner West End cinemas in Leicester Square. What made the movie extra scary at the time was how real it was. Yeah, it was set in some unspecified near future, but it nonetheless reflected with a stark accuracy the way London's youth culture was at the time. That is, ultraviolent. Nick said it was funny how Americans tend to perceive English culture as very genteel. In the sixties and seventies, at least, that couldn't have been further from the truth. Youth gangs and hooliganism were rampant. Literally right outside the Warner West End, Nick said, you'd be wise to tread carefully. He essentially was watching a movie that reflected what was going on right outside the cinema doors.

A Clockwork Orange only exacerbated things. After a year and a half in the cinemas and innumerable reports of copycat violence, Stanley Kubrick himself spearheaded a campaign to banish his own baby from all screens in Britain. The ban remained in effect until shortly after his death in 1999. Still, though, despite that tempestuous relationship with the public, this flick was positively critic proof. Its Oscar nomination for Best Picture made it the second X-rated film ever to get that nomination. It also scored noms for Best Director, Best Screenplay Adaptation, and Best Editing. In Britain, despite its eventual ban, it scored no less than seven BAFTA nominations (the British equivalent of the Oscar).

Since this was being shown as part of the L.A. Philharmonic's Concrete Frequency program, Nick eventually talked about the music in the film, and more specifically about the person who composed the music. I tell ya, even if this wasn't part of a music event, it would still be worth talking about this cat. The soundtrack to A Clockwork Orange was composed by a 32-year-old from Rhode Island named Walter Carlos. Never heard of 'im? This is the guy who basically pioneered the use of synthesized and electronic music. In the late sixties he put the Moog synthesizer on the map with his album Switched-on Bach, the very first ever album of completely synthesized classical music and which scored Carlos three Grammys. Surely he had a ball with A Clockwork Orange. That opening piece alone was terrific and is repeated throughout the film. I couldn't get enough of it. He also got to do for Beethoven what he did for Bach, whenever Alex de Large in the film pops in, as he calls it, a "little of the Ludwig van." About a year or so after the film, Walter Carlos underwent a sex change operation and became Wendy Carlos. The music didn't stop. She did an album called Switched-on Brandenburgs and contributed to the soundtracks of The Shining and Tron. As a side note, Wendy's got a thing for solar eclipses. If you go to her site (wendycarlos.com), she's got a page chockfull of information and images of solar eclipses she's been documenting since 1963.

Nick also talked a bit about Stanley's background and character. Born in New York, he made England his permanent home in his mid thirties, around the time he made Lolita. If you're wondering why A Clockwork Orange is such a "wholly English film," as Nick put it, it's because Stan had already been living in England for about a decade at that point. Stan was very reactionary when picking his projects. In other words, he sort of let them find him. He'd never heard of Anthony Burgess or his novel A Clockwork Orange until a friend passed it along to him. But if you're wondering why Stan only turned out four more films in the 28 years still left to him, it wasn't because he was reactionary or that he fell out of love with movie making. It's because he became ever more obsessive compulsive to the point that directing a film became a chore more daunting and consuming than it already is in general. Before releasing The Shining for instance, Stan literally watched all 800 prints of the final cut. Yes, I mean that literally. Dude sat and watched The Shining 800 times, not because he adored it so much, but because he wanted to make sure the sound was all right. In his perfect world, all theaters would have mono sound. That way, there was no chance of a speaker crapping out and compromising the film's soundtrack. Since that just wasn't realistic, he decided to make sure himself, print by print, that if there were any sound issues, the fault wouldn't lie on his end. Eventually Stan minimized his use of original scores. The more inflamed his OCD became, the greater the chance he wouldn't like whatever original music the composer came up with. So he just started using old songs he knew he liked. That's too bad. It would've been really cool to see what kind of music Wendy Carlos could've come up with for a flick like Eyes Wide Shut.

At the Movies with Governor Tom: Mad Money

Back in December 2001, a British made-for-TV movie aired on the BBC called Hot Money. Based on true events, Hot Money concerns three gals named Bridget, Liz, and Jackie, who work as cleaners at the Bank of England. When they discover that heaps of banknotes totaling thousands of pounds have been earmarked for the Bank of England's incinerating plant in Essex because they're too used and worn, the trio plot to make off with all that dough. Sure, it may be worn paper money, but it's still perfectly useable. So they stuff all the cash down their underwear and try to walk out like everything's hunky-dory.

Texan filmmaker Callie Khouri, who stormed onto the scene back in '91 when she scored a Best Original Screenplay Oscar for Thelma & Louise (the first script she ever wrote), has directed an American remake of Hot Money called Mad Money. Diane Keaton, Queen Latifah, and Katie Holmes play the three would-be heisters: Bridget, Nina (called Liz in the original), and Jackie. The story takes place in Kansas City, Missouri, the bank in question now the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. Diane Keaton's character Bridget is our heroine. For decades now she's been a stay-at-home mom while her husband Don (Ted Danson) has been climbing the corporate ladder. The plot kicks off when Don, now a senior veep, is "downsized," which of course means laid off. Or as the British would say, Don was made redundant. And before I go further, I should point out that Ted Danson easily steals every scene he's in. Growing up on Cheers as I did, it was great seeing Sam Malone in top form. His performance is all the more impressive considering he's just come off playing the sociopathic Arthur Frobisher on the first season of the FX drama Damages. To go from Arthur Frobisher to this flick is quite a feat. Bravo, Sammy!

Anyway, Bridget's desperate not to change her lifestyle and not to sell the house, six-figure debts be damned. So while Don licks his ego's wounds, Bridget, armed with an ancient resume and her BA in comparative lit, lands a job as a janitor at the Federal Reserve Bank. One day, while polishing the monitor screens in the surveillance office, she sees someone on one of the screens shredding tons and tons of worn out paper money. While pretending to go through the motions as the janitor, Bridget eventually meets the woman down in the shredding room who has the dubious pleasure of grinding up all those dollars. Her name's Nina (Queen Latifah), and for eight hours every day it's her job to shred no less than a million dollars' worth of dead presidents. Nina's a single mom to two boys and has little sympathy for Bridget's upper middle class problems. Still, the two hit it off and soon become pals. I should say here, by the way, that Queen Latifah is terrific as Nina. In fact, she seems to get better with each film. Anyway, while befriending Nina, Bridget comes up with a plan to smuggle out some of that wasted dough. I won't go into the details of her plan, but suffice it to say that as with the three gals from the British original, it involves cramming as many greenbacks down their trousers as is humanly practical.

The only trouble is, they need one more person to make it work. Jackie (Katie Holmes) works as a money cart pusher. I'm not sure what her official job title is, but that's basically what she does. Once the money sorters decide which money should be shredded, they count it all up and stack it inside this giant cart. And then Katie Holmes has to wheel it down to Nina in the shredding room. After convincing an at-first very skeptical Nina to take part in her plan, Bridget as well as Nina take Jackie out to Junior's, a pub that's basically Bridget's local. She and Junior have known each other for years. Whereas Nina needed a lot of convincing, though, Jackie pretty much agrees to the plan right away. She and her some-young-guy live in a trailer and wouldn't mind a few extra ducats. Yes, you guessed it, Jackie isn't exactly the sharpest knife in the military surplus store, and her husband is even worse. But hey, what does Bridget care so long as Jackie does what she's supposed to do and her man doesn't get in the way? In fact, Jackie's husband Bob is more than happy to help in any way he can, and he does. A little too much. In fact, Bob inadvertently makes things a little too complicated for our three heroines.

I won't go too much further into the story because, as with any heist film, part of your enjoyment hinges on not knowing the twists ahead of time. At first, the plan goes off swimmingly. Then the scheme seems destined for the fate any moviegoer could predict, but Callie Khouri never quite gives you what you expect. She, in fact, is the reason I caught the sneak preview of Mad Money last night at the ArcLight Sherman Oaks. She was there afterward for a Q&A, interviewed by Parade writer Jeanne Wolf.

Back in 1982 when she was 25, Callie Khouri moved out to L.A. to be an actor. She studied acting at the Strasburg Institute. Then she was like, "Nah, I don't wanna act. I wanna be on the more creative side." To tide herself over, she found a gig as a receptionist at a production company that made commercials. After work, she'd work on a screenplay by hand. Then, during the day when there was dead time at the office, she'd type up the script on the computer. This script we're talking about here? You guessed it. Thelma & Louise.

After landing on the Hollywood star map for Thelma (which won her not only an Oscar but also a Golden Globe and a WGA award), Callie went on to write the screenplay for 1995's Something to Talk About, directed by Lasse Hallstrom, that Swedish maestro of the feel-good flick, starring Julia Roberts, Dennis Quaid, and Robert "God" Duvall. She then made her directorial debut with 2002's Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, for which she also penned the script adaptation. That had a ton of well-known actresses: Sandra Bullock, Ellen Burstyn, Ashley Judd, Maggie Smith, Fionnula Flanagan, Cherry Jones, you name it. Between projects she works as a script doctor on other people's stuff. I have to confess that I didn't catch Something or Ya-Ya until very recently, but of course we've all seen Thelma & Louise. Right? No? Well dude, put it on your queue, stat. It's directed by Ridley Scott, which means everyone should see it by default. Don't worry about the unhappy ending. It doesn't spoil anything. And besides, if you ask Callie, the ending was more than happy. When she accepted her Oscar for writing it, she went up on stage, held up her statue, and was like: "For those of you who wanted a happy ending to Thelma & Louise, this is it." Awwwww.......

Speaking of Thelma, at one point in the Q&A Callie talked about how floored she was at all the academic interest her debut screenplay has attracted over the years. There've been papers, books, you name it, all this stuff analyzing that one film and its place in the pop culture canon. So many people, Callie said, have been thinking about that flick much more than she ever did. Her only goal was to tell a rip-roaring yarn about women taking charge. Another thing that surprised her about Thelma was the scene where Louise (Susan Sarandon) kills that one guy. When she first watched it in the theater with an audience, she expected there to be stunned silence. Instead, she said people were cheering and clapping their heads off. Since then, she's given up trying to predict audience reaction.

Callie, by the way, is a petite blonde thing who doesn't look anywhere near 50. With her husky voice she kicked off the Q&A by talking about how it took close to forever to get Mad Money to the screen. Less than a year after the BBC aired Hot Money, Callie already had a deal with MGM to direct the American remake. They had a script by a chap called Glenn Gers, and Callie had producer Jay Cohen to help her out. Diane Keaton and Queen Latifah had already signed on to do it. Everything seemed set to go...and then Sony bought a controlling interest in MGM. The project was relegated to development purgatory. Finally the film went into turnaround, and Callie and Jay got it back. Jay wasted no time in securing independent financing. Amazingly, Diane Keaton and Queen Latifah were still interested in doing it. The reason I say amazingly is that, as Callie herself pointed out during the Q&A, actors rarely retain an interest in a project if it's taking forever to get it off the ground. As for Katie Holmes, she was the second choice. If it were a perfect world, Callie said she would have angled for Lindsay Lohan to play Jackie, but we all know Lindsay's world at the moment is light years from perfect. Her drug abuse notwithstanding, Callie couldn't rave enough about what a great actress Lindsay is. I happen to agree with her. If you saw Freaky Friday or Mean Girls, you'll know that Lindsay was on a roll and had so much going for her before she blew her foot off. That said, Katie Holmes was a close second choice. Callie offered her the part assuming she'd opt out of it so she could reprise her character from Batman Begins in this summer's The Dark Knight. But nope. Jackie's a much meatier character than Rachel Dawes, so Katie said yes to Callie. By the way, the character of Rachel will still be in The Dark Knight but will now be played by Maggie Gyllenhaal.

When Glenn Gers sold the script, he wanted to direct it. Then Callie came aboard and said she'd do it, which was fine by Glenn. He figured if there was one person more qualified than him to direct his girl power flick, it would have to be Callie Khouri. It was sort of the reverse situation of when Callie sold Thelma & Louise. At first, she wanted to direct it. She said she had that whole thing mapped out in her head practically shot for shot. Then, when Ridley stepped in and said he'd do it, she was like, "Well okay. If the guy who made Blade Runner wants to make my movie, how can that be a bad thing?" Callie was much nicer to Glenn, by the way, than most directors are to their writers. With rare exception, screenwriters are barred from the set during production. Not Glenn, though. Callie insisted he be there every day and was very open to him helping her work out any last-minute story wrinkles. Now that is rare. Glenn is one lucky dude.

It took 39 days to shoot Mad Money, and Callie's amazed she was able to get it done in that time. She didn't mean to go that fast, but the budget sort of demanded it. She shot Ya-Ya in 55 days, which at the time she deemed to be very quick. She remembered not believing she was "only" being given barely two months to do it. Although Mad Money is set in K.C., it was shot entirely in Shreveport, Louisiana. I'm sure the budget dictated that as well. If Shreveport was cheap, though, it certainly wasn't healthy. Everyone in the cast and crew got sick with the flu at some point. Callie said that Ted Danson was sick as a dog the entire shoot, which makes his scene-stealing turn all the more impressive.

During preproduction Callie paid a visit to the real Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City and was given a grand tour. However, the point of that research wasn't so she could create an interior set that would look just like the real bank, but so that she could create an interior set that would look nothing like the real thing. The powers that be at the bank wanted to be sure Callie wasn't going to give would-be thieves any ideas about trying to pull off a copycat heist. So if there are any nutters in the audience who think this movie's giving them some inside look at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, they're in for a big surprise.

The recurring theme during the shoot was the hair. It was all about the hair. Callie said that never in her life has she ever seen so much attention paid to hair as was paid to the hair of her three leading ladies. We're not just talking about their hair being done in the trailer every morning. Even between takes on a single scene, assistants would run up to the gals and touch up the hair. All that stopping and starting meant more time for the three gals to chat away with each other. Callie said that Diane, Queen, and Katie got along so famously that now and then she'd have to step in and remind them that there was a movie to make here. Diane Keaton must be used to this process because Callie couldn't stop raving about Diane's ability to go in and out of character on a dime. Still, though. However much time was wasted by their gabbing, obviously it's better to have your three leads get along, right? There were two instances in particular Callie talked about. The first was the scene in Junior's BBQ joint where Diane and Queen are telling Katie about their heist idea. And then there's a scene during the first heist where all three of them are in a bathroom stall stuffing greenbacks down their shorts. When Callie saw how easily they pulled off those scenes, she knew her movie was going to work out.

As thrilled as she was to have Katie Holmes in the cast, she still had to deal with paparazzi stalking the set. Callie couldn't emphasize their ubiquity enough. The damned buzzards were in the trees, on the rooftops, everywhere. When it came time to shoot Katie's first scene, Callie was sincerely concerned that Katie wouldn't be able to do it with weirdo photographers clicking away from all over the place. It's the one scene where she dances to her car in the parking lot with her iPod, and Diane Keaton and Queen Latifah first approach her about the job. Katie must be used to the extra attention because she nailed her scene on the first take. Tom Cruise paid a visit to the set with his and Katie's daughter, Suri. Callie gushed like a schoolgirl about Tom and his "megawatt charisma."

What impressed Callie about Queen Latifah was how she could remember precisely how she did a scene several hours earlier when it was shot from a different angle. You see, when you shoot a scene, it's likely that you'll want to shoot from several different angles and then edit it all together later. The thing is, though, that can take forever. It takes forever to set up the scenes, especially the lights. No, really, if you've ever been involved in making a flick, even a short flick, you'll know that it's all about the lights. So when you shoot a scene from one angle, it could be two or three hours (or days) before you shoot the rest of that scene from additional angles. What Queen Latifah did that set her apart was remember precisely the way she was sitting or standing, her facial expression, mannerisms, whatever, when the first angle of the scene had been shot so that she could replicate it precisely for the next angle. Callie's never seen someone do that so well.

When Jeanne Wolf asked her what she preferred more between writing and directing, Callie said hands down it was directing. She went on to echo something I read in a George Lucas interview a few years ago. To her, writing a screenplay feels like writing a term paper. It seems like work that you'll never get done. With all due respect to Callie, I'm sorta glad she didn't write Mad Money then, although I think it's ironic as hell that she wrote such a zeitgeist-nailing film as Thelma & Louise. As a writer myself, I can't imagine why someone would choose to write if it seems like homework. When George Lucas said it, I immediately figured out why the Star Wars prequels were so poorly written. They were being written by a man who hates to write. Why he didn't farm out the screenplay duties to writers who like to write, as he did on The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, is beyond me. Anyway, if Callie prefers strictly to direct, that's awesome. The next time she comes out with something, I'll be there to see it. I just hope it doesn't take another six years.

Jellwagger - Episode 6: On Her Majesty's Secret Sofa

He did it.

Against all odds, while falling all the way down from a wonderful drunken high to the depths of fatigue and hangover, his head playing a symphony, his mouth sticky with the aftertaste of scotch-laden puke, the echoes of Stu Dobkin’s blackmailing tirade still bouncing off his cubicle walls, through all of that and in spite of that, our very own Jellwagger finished the entire data stack for Betsy.

There was just one small hitch, though. He couldn’t go home. It was already pushing seven in the morning. Sure, he could’ve taken the Red Line back to North Hollywood, but Shitty Shitty Bang Bang wasn’t there. It was still parked at Spago. And even if his car was parked in North Hollywood, he wouldn’t have had the time to get home, walk Chump E. Chips, bathe, change, and come all the way back. Jellwagger would simply have to continue working into today, do his absolute damnedest not to slip into a coma, and get to bed extra early tonight. And he couldn’t have any beer when he got home. Liquids approaching the color brown would be strictly verboten. In fact, if the name of the liquid didn’t start with W and end with A-T-E-R, he wouldn’t take a single sip of it. Not just his head, but his entire body felt wracked with abuse. His stomach felt like oatmeal, his limbs like phantoms of their former selves. And his dick. Good God did it burn like a bitch every time he took a leak. Since the end of the last episode, Jellwagger had probably gotten up to take a whiz no less than a thousand times. Every time he did, his piss not only looked and smelled like Lagavulin, but it absolutely fried his urethra to a crisp. And I do mean every time. He never got used to it.

As for the whole nothing-but-water thing, that would have to wait for tonight. If he was to survive this day, Jellwagger required coffee the way vampires required blood. And he required it now. Normally he didn’t bother with the café on the ground floor, as the stuff in the break room was usually strong enough. Not on this day, though. While the break room coffee was just normal old coffee, the café offered up both regular coffee for those who wanted an excuse to step away from their cubicles for a bit longer than they could’ve if they’d just made the short trip to the break room, and it also offered a whole slew of various concoctions and potions that could kick your ass from here to next week until the caffeine left boot prints on both ass cheeks.

It wasn’t even half past seven yet when he went down, so it never occurred to him that there’d be much of a line. Sure enough, the damned thing snaked out the café’s front doors and into the elevator lobby. The baristas, God bless each and every one of them, obviously had their operation down to a science, as it only took them ten or fifteen minutes to zip through the millions of customers in front of Jellwagger. When it was Jellwagger’s turn to order, it took another ten or fifteen minutes. Here’s why.

“Good morning, sir!” the barista said when it was Jellwagger’s turn. What threw him off kilter right off the bat was the way she greeted him. She sounded all surprised and whatnot that Jellwagger would actually be there. Then it occurred to him that of course she would be. He’d never been down here before, not once in all the four years he’d worked upstairs. While connecting these two mental dots, the barista’s frown sunk deeper, as if she were trying to figure out telepathically what Jellwagger was going to order. Even if she had that power, it would’ve been hopeless, for he himself had no idea about any of those drinks on the menu board above her head.

“Let me level with you here, babe,” he said. “Can I do that? I’ll let you decide what to make me, but let me tell you. I absolutely must have something that will kick my ass. You get me? Kick. My ass. I want a drink that shows no mercy. Can you do that for me?”

Her cute little smile sent that frown packing. How she managed to be so cute and chipper and smiley this early in the morning while helping all these grumpy, underslept white collar zombies would be a mystery to Jellwagger for the rest of his life. “Absolutely, sir. I would recommend a triple Americano.”

“Perfect. Just the name of it sounds awesome. The triple American. You make that name up yourself?”

“Triple Americano, sir.”

“Whatever. What’s in it? Just out of curiosity. I know I said I didn’t care, but this is something I’m going to be putting into my body. If you knew the kind of night I had last night, you’d know that I’m hardly in any shape to just dump anything down there, know what I mean?”

“Absolutely, sir. The triple Americano is three shots of espresso with steamed hot water.” She smiled. “And no, I did not make up the name. Now what size would you like, sir?”

“Hold on a second. That’s it? There’s no coffee in it?”

“Espresso is a kind of coffee, sir.”

“But you’re putting water in it.”

“Espresso is very strong, sir. People don’t drink three shots of it pure. The steamed hot water dilutes it a bit so that you can actually drink three shots in one serving. I assure you it will have the effect you desire.”

“So it’s like the coffee equivalent of a scotch and soda or something. The soda’s in there to make it not so nasty, but that doesn’t change the fact that the scotch is in there and will trigger an attack of morality the next morning while you’re trying to meet a deadline whether you like it or not. Am I warm?”

“Pretty much, sir. Now what size?”

His instinct was to say large, but Jellwagger had heard from one of his coworkers one time that caffeine stayed in your system a lot longer than you thought. You could have two or three cups of coffee in the morning, and by the time you went to bed that night, millions of hours later, you might have a tough time because that caffeine was still wiring your system. Jellwagger wanted to be sure he’d get to sleep early tonight, ideally as soon as he stepped in his apartment. The last thing he needed was to toss and turn because of the triple American or whatever. “I’ll take a medium, babe,” he said.

“We don’t have a medium, sir.”

“A small then. I can only have a small if you don’t have a medium.”

“We don’t have small, sir.”

“The thing is, babe. If I have a large, it might make me an insomniac tonight, and I can’t afford that.”

“We don’t have a large, sir. We have tall, grande, venti, and san clemente.”

“Tall, huh? That sounds ominous.”

“Here’s the tall.” She held up a cup for Jellwagger.

“That thing’s barely as big as a baby’s pee-pee. Don’t you have anything bigger? I need an ass kicking, babe. I told you.”

“Sir, we have three sizes larger than that. I’ve told you them already.”

“And you obviously assumed my memory was photographic.”

She held up three different-sized cups and indicated each one as she named them. What really stuck in his craw was that she named them just as fast as before.

“Okay here’s the deal, babe. I need something that will kick my ass. But at the same time. Are you hearing me? This is important. At the same time, I need to get to bed very early tonight. I need to sleep so soundly and so deeply that even if Chump E. Chips, my most loyal compatriot, comes in and starts slobbering all over my face, it won’t make a single bit of difference. So don’t give me anything that will have an effect on me past, say, five o’clock or so. Can you recommend a size?”

“The venti.”

“That cup reminds me of the trashcan under my cubicle.” While the barista was in the process of grabbing another cup, the young buck behind Jellwagger spun him around by the shoulders, grabbed the upper stem of Jellwagger’s tie, and yanked him toward his gritted teeth.

“Listen, retard. Look behind me. Go ahead. Look!” Jellwagger obliged. Behind the indignant youngster stretched a line that not only spilled into the elevator lobby, but reached the far wall before winding around on itself. “There are people who need their coffee. They need their coffee, and they needed it an hour ago. And yet here you are, babbling about small, medium, and large like someone who’s been living in a cave since the eighties. Get the fuck out of your cave, man. I’d punch you back into the eighties if I didn’t see that you obviously need your caffeine as well. In fact, you probably need it more than anyone else in this miles-long line.”

“I just don’t feel good, sir,” Jellwagger said. What else was he going to say? This youngster needed an explanation of some sort. “I needed to get something strong. I don’t want to be here. I just want to go home. I feel like shit.”

“Welcome. To the mother. Fucking. Human race, baby,” the youngster said before spinning Jellwagger back around to face the barista.

“Venti triple American,” Jellwagger said.

“Venti triple Americano,” the barista said while using a black marker to jot abbreviations on the cup. “Your name?”

“Jellwagger.”

The barista glared at our man, sighed, shook her head, and improvised an abbreviation for his name.

Jellwagger made the egregious mistake of taking a sip of his Americano during the elevator trip back up to Powell and Powler. If you’ve ever had an Americano, you’ll know that it’s not just hot water they put in that sucker. It’s water from the very tap of hell. You don’t take a sip of your Americano right after it’s ready. It’ll burn the very flesh of your mouth straight down to the core of your being, caffeinating your very essence for the rest of time. You’ve got to give it ten minutes minimum to be survivable by humans. Everyone knows that. Everyone, that is, except Jellwagger. He braved a slurp through the little slit in the top, swallowed it, and suffered the greatest agony of his life. The dozen or so very well dressed professionals around him kept their eyes either on the mirror doors or the digital floor numbers getting higher and pretended not to notice the suffering fool in their midst. Jellwagger felt the hell water’s imprint on the roof of his mouth for the rest of the day, thus ensuring he’d never forget this lesson for as long as he lived. Instead of ten minutes, he gave it a good half-hour before he took his second sip. When he did, it was all he could do not to emit orgasmic moans.

The caffeine combined with the pride of finishing that monster data stack to make Jellwagger sit a little more erect than he usually did, with his chin up. Son of a bitch, he did it. He spied on Pat Dinner just as Carla wanted. Instead of sulking over her winning that argument in the bathroom stall, he continued following Pat to such an expert degree that the billionaire decided he wanted to hire our man. And, to top it off like whipped cream on one of those coffee beverages downstairs, Jellwagger made it back to the office and finished Betsy Seth’s assignment. He didn’t want to disappoint her anymore than he did Carla. Or Pat, for that matter. Yeah, she was married. Yeah, Jellwagger didn’t have a snowball’s chance in a microwave of ever scoring with her, but that didn’t change the fact that she was gorgeous and had never been mean to Jellwagger. Oh yeah, and she was his boss.

Speaking of Betsy, obviously there was no way she could have known the lengths to which Jellwagger had gone to finish this assignment. As far as she knew, he’d worked four hours of overtime and had gone home to get a good night’s rest. Which was why, during the one and only time she walked by his cubicle that day, she didn’t even stop while saying: “Thanks for getting that done, Michael.” Sure, she made eye contact and smiled those wonderfully white teeth and afforded Jellwagger a good whiff of her perfume. But she never stopped. She thanked him and didn’t miss a beat in her quick step, just like the way you thanked the cashier at the grocery store as you hurried out with your goods because you’d gone there straight from work and could only think of getting home as fast as possible so you could kick back with a beer.

When Grant marched by for the first and only time that day, he actually stopped at Jellwagger’s surround and gave him the thumbs up. And he didn’t just stop at the surround. He walked right up to it until it was pressing into his ribs and he was leaning over a bit with the Grant Gaze mere inches from Jellwagger’s face. “All right, Jellwagger! Excellent work. And the wording of your e-mail was perfect. You can always tell who the writer is, can’t you?” Yes, you got it. Grant was going out of his way to thank Jellwagger. But for obvious reasons, right? If you recall the, ahem, compromising position in which Jellwagger found him the previous night in the office of one of the partners? Grant really had nothing to worry about, though. As Jellwagger told him last night on the way out to Spago, he actually liked him. And he didn’t like many others in the firm. Grant and Betsy topped the list, and it dropped off steeply from there.

“I’m not surprised you knew I was a writer. First of all, I’ve told you many times before. And secondly, I happen to be pretty intensely involved in a brand-spanking-new screenplay about a loner from Wal-Mart whom everybody underestimates, including and especially his own wife and child. And then, what do you know? He goes to Greenland and helps the Inuit people brush off the Danish yoke. I’m working on that as we speak, Grant. So of course you can tell I’m a writer. I’m at my literary best when I’m in the thick of a project about which my passion knows no bounds.”

“Yeah.” The Grant Gaze bore straight into Jellwagger’s skull with those parted lips and caged teeth. “Yeah.” Yet another pause. “Yeah.” Grant almost never did the whole “yeah” thing three times, and when he did, something was obviously wrong.

“We’re cool, Grant,” Jellwagger said, looking to either side to make sure no one was listening. “Like I said last night. All’s forgotten.”

“God damn it, Jellwagger, I was such a shit, wasn’t I? God damn it.”

“But then I went out right after that and may have surpassed you in the shit category.”

“Yeah. What do you mean?”

“I need to get back to this, kiddo. No sooner did I polish off that monster data stack than Betsy gives me a bunch of new shit for the next newsletter. She CCed you.” Grant was looking around.

“I’ve sort of been in a trance all morning, Jellwagger. E-mails haven’t been a priority. I don’t know, maybe Betsy knew that and sent that stuff straight to you.”

“She said you were working on something else.”

“Shit. I have no idea what that could be. You ever have the feeling that you just want to go home and do what you want? Like, I really want to go home right now and work on Shades of Cream. No, you have no idea. I really want to go home right now, lock the door, turn off all the fucking God damned lights, smoke a bunch of cigarettes, pick away at a tub of ice cream, and work on Shades of Cream. God, man, it’s such a gorgeous color. The fact that all the filing cabinets here are that color is the only reason I won’t quit right now.”

“Excellent. I’ll sneak in one night while Stu’s got you distracted and paint them all black.” Grant gave him the Gaze. “Joke! Come on, Grant. What the hell? I’ve got shit to do.”

“You tell me about John Lane, I think I’m entitled to tell you about Shades of Cream, Jellwagger.”

“How’d you know his name was John Lane?”

“Yeah.”

“Grant, come on. How’d you know?”

“Because you’ve told me, as you would say, millions and millions of times. It’s an attractive story, Jellwagger, but you’ve been working on it for months. Or, as you would say, you have been toiling on it since the beginning of time. But we’re cool, right? Everything’s cool?”

“What? Oh yeah. Sure. Like I’ve been saying for years.” Grant gave him the thumbs up and stomped away. Just as his boot pounding was about to pass out of earshot, Jellwagger heard him say:

“Yeah.”

Jellwagger didn’t feel tired all morning. Amazing, really. It was no wonder all seventeen thousand employees in the Sanwa Bank building took advantage of that café. You could have an all-nighter and get totally wasted and still work a full productive day thanks to one of their concoctions.

That theory went straight to shit as soon as Jellwagger got back from lunch. His stomach heavy with a chili dog, no sooner did he sit back down in his cubicle than he could barely keep his eyes open. Seriously, it was awful. Thank Christ Betsy and Grant had too much to do and that Stu, despite his blustering, was most likely too scared to confront Jellwagger again. Because if any of them caught him out for the count on the clock, that scotch-sucking billionaire and his carrot-topped madam of an ex-wife would be the only two employers Jellwagger had left. Speaking of which, it didn’t exactly help his exhaustion and irritability that after work he’d have to find a way back to Spago to get Shitty Shitty Bang Bang. God damn those rich people and their supposed problems. The next time he saw or spoke to either of them, he’d let them know exactly where they stood in his worldview. He was sorely tempted to get Carla on the horn this instant with her stupid walkie-talkie cellphone, but thought better of it just as he was fishing for the cell in his pocket. He was too tired to think of what to say.

Only one person in the world could rescue Jellwagger from his post-lunch napping instinct, and you know the New Jersey native’s name: Bruce to the Willis. That’s right. It was time for more of Civilization and Its Discontents by Sigmund Freud, narrated by John McLane. He had finished chapter five last night, just before catching Grant and Stu in flagrante. Maybe, just maybe, the words of Sigmund Freud, father of psychology, read by Detective McLane to boot, would help purge his brain of that memory. Let’s see how chapter six started.

“In none of my previous writings have I had so strong a feeling as now that what I am describing is common knowledge and that I am using up paper and ink and, in due course, the compositor’s and printer’s work and material in order to expound things which are, in fact, self-evident. For that reason I should be glad to seize the point if it were to appear that the recognition of a special, independent aggressive instinct means an alteration of the psycho-analytic theory of the instincts.”

This was fantastic! Just what Jellwagger needed to get through the afternoon doldrums. And listen to how Bruce said that last phrase, “alteration of the psycho-analytic theory of the instincts.” It was the way he said it, that John McLane tone, that would work perfectly in an action picture like Exit the Danish. It was exactly how he said “Welcome to the party, pal!”, and would be the same ass-kicking tone he’d use for the scene when he tells the head Danish bad guy what the score is. I mean the real score. That it was time for the imperial forces to pack their asses in rucksacks and head for Copenhagen.

It wasn’t until well into the afternoon, around three or so, when Jellwagger realized he hadn’t heard a peep all day from Carla. Didn’t that comet head want to know how things had gone last night with her ex? This occurred to him while taking a dump. The last time they’d spoken had been in the bathroom stall last night at Spago. He pulled out the walkie-talkie cell and confirmed that it was on and that the voicemail box was empty. Also in his pocket was the Spago pen he’d pocketed after signing that God damned receipt at the bar for his stupid God damned broth and German sausages. When he got back to his desk, Jellwagger placed it prominently in the pen holder on his surround. He positioned it so that it stood a bit taller than the other pens and that the word Spago would be visible in all its calligraphic glory to anyone walking by.

But still. No matter how beautiful that pen looked or how much the voice of Bruce Willis inspired him to be a screenwriter, nothing could stop five o’clock from rolling around with the prospect of spending yet another ton of money, this time for a cab to get back to Spago and his car. Down in the lobby he was walking toward the glass doors while the aspiring actor security guard flirted with one of the young hot administrative assistants from Powell and Powler whom Jellwagger knew for a fact to be committed to someone else. It wasn’t the gut-wrenching sound of that guy’s cockiness that stopped him in his tracks. It was the sight through the glass doors. A limo was waiting by the curb.

Of course the limo theoretically could’ve been for anyone. Tons of people worked in this building, and just about all of them were more important than Jellwagger. So technically the odds that this limo was for him should have been anywhere between miniscule and nonexistent. Yet something was familiar about the limo as well as the black-suited driver standing in front of it with his hands behind his back and his eyes glued to the glass wall next to the doors. It had been dark last night, and Jellwagger couldn’t remember if he’d even laid eyes on the driver or had time to notice anything about the limo. Regardless, the driver obviously recognized him because his eyes snapped in Jellwagger’s direction. He walked to the rear passenger-side door and opened it as Jellwagger came out.

Jellwagger stood for a moment staring at the driver, who stared back at him. Something in Jellwagger’s brain simply refused to let him believe this limo was for him. Soon the driver would realize his mistake and close that door and go back to standing with his hands behind his back and his eyes facing the glass wall until his real customer showed up. Perhaps, though, he could take advantage of the driver’s attention. “Think you could call me a cab?”

“Mr. Dinner sends his regrets for the third glass of Lagavulin,” the driver said. “If it’s any consolation, the third glass hurt him as much as yours did you.”

Jellwagger stood there like an idiot. God damn, he was tired.

“Please, sir. Traffic on Wilshire’s a bear. We should head out as soon as you’re able.”

“Where is he?”

“Busy.”

“Not that I really want to know. I’m in no shape for chores.”

“Please, sir.”

Jellwagger slid into the back of the limo and stretched out his legs as the driver shut the door and walked around to the front. He should’ve been beyond psyched to have all this plush leather cargo space to himself, but no sooner did the limo turn west onto Wilshire than Jellwagger couldn’t keep his eyes open to save his life. The setting sun didn’t help. The rays burst through the smoked windows and knocked our man out for the count.

It was dark when someone shook him awake. Jellwagger snapped opened his eyes to see the driver’s stubbled face inches from his.

“We’re here, sir,” the driver said.

“Already?”

“I’m not sure what you mean by already. It took an hour and a half. I’ve already paid the valet. Your car’s right over there.”

Jellwagger scooted over until he sat on the edge of the seat with his feet on the curb. Those same two valets were standing by their podium. They took one glance at Jellwagger and chuckled to themselves. He wanted to get up and ask to see if their cars were any better than his, but all he could think of doing right now was lying back down and going to sleep.

“You sure you’ll be okay to drive, sir?”

“Doesn’t his majesty have any chores for me to do?”

“His only instruction for tonight was to go home and get some rest. And if you don’t mind my saying, sir, I’d take him up on that. This may be the one and only time he’ll order you to sleep as opposed to give you something to do that’ll leave you sleep deprived.”

The cool air felt wonderful as he got to his feet. Sure enough, there was Shitty Shitty Bang Bang parked along the curb a few feet behind the limo. He never thought he’d be so ecstatic to see it. The driver handed him the keys. “So listen,” Jellwagger said. “There’s something I keep meaning to ask you.”

“Sir?”

“Who the hell are you?”

The driver held out his hand. “Name’s Flip. Pleased to meet you, sir.”

“You’re shitting me. Your name’s Flip? So let me get this straight. There’s you popping out of your mom’s belly. She’s psyched, your dad’s psyched. They’re parents now, this is so awesome. There you are, all tiny and squeaky and whatever. And your parents look at you and say with straight faces, ‘Why golly, Helen. Let’s call him Flip.’ Does that sound about accurate?”

“My pop’s name was Philip. They named me Philip Jr. To make it easier for Mother, she called him Philip and me Flip.”

“Amazing. And you just lay there like a doormat and took it.”

“Your name is Jellwagger, is it not?”

“Name’s Michael if you want to know.”

“Jellwagger?”

“Jellwag. It’s just that most people throw that extra G-E-R on there.”

“Oh okay. Yeah, that makes it better.”

“Fuck you, Flip.” Jellwagger’s eyes lit up. “Hey, alliteration. Fuck you, Flip. Fuck you, Flip.”

“Pardon me, sir. I must depart.”

“You must depart? I’ll bet you’re the only one on this watery ball called Earth who talks like that. Say listen, Flip. What the hell do you do?”

“I’m Mr. Dinner’s personal chauffeur, sir.”

“So wherever Patsy wants to go, and I mean wherever the hell he wants to go, he gets you on the horn and you take him. It could be to fucking Alaska. You take him.”

“One time on a whim he had me drive him to Grand Teton National Park. He wanted to get away for a bit. He doesn’t have to get me on the horn. I live on his estate. He can just knock on my door if he wants. Although come to think of it, sometimes he’s been known to call my cell even if we’re both in the house.”

“Money good, Flip?”

Flip shut the passenger door and walked around to the driver’s side.

“It’s just that I’m thinking about changing rackets, Flip. I’ve sort of outgrown the whole law firm data entry thing, know what I mean?”

“Have a good evening, sir.” He was about to get in when Jellwagger said:

“Hey Flip! Hang on, man. You know I was just kidding about the whole fuck you thing. I don’t really want you to fuck yourself. Sometimes I get sensitive about my name, that’s all. Not like you, though. Philip. What a nice normal name.”

“So is Michael.”

“You’re not going to snuff me out or anything, right? We’re cool and everything?”

Flip looked at him with a slight smile at the corner of his mouth. “Mother’s name wasn’t Helen. It was Wilhelmina.”

“Now there’s a name. I’ll bet she was hot. Was she a MILF, Flip?”

Flip got into the car and started it up. The limo’s engine was nearly inaudible. Yet Jellwagger sensed a lot of power behind it. Or was he thinking of Flip? “Aw shit. Flip! I’m sorry, man. I didn’t mean it. I’m so tired right now, and when I get tired, I may as well be drunk. I say the dumbest God damned things.” The limo drove up Cañon and swung a left to head west on Santa Monica Blvd. “Hey Flip! I’ll make it up to you! You can fuck my mother if you want!” By now the valets weren’t even trying to be discreet about their cracking up.

To keep himself awake during the drive home, Jellwagger rolled down all the windows—yes the car was old enough that all the windows as well as the locks were manual—and blasted the A/C. He also blasted NPR and pretended to have conversations with the people babbling on it. This one show on right now always touched on various political, social, and economic issues going on in L.A. Tonight’s show, for instance, was about cancer-causing carcinogens that had recently been discovered in the reservoirs supplying L.A. with its tap water. At one point Jellwagger was screaming at the top of his lungs that no one in L.A. should ever be allowed to drink tap water ever again, whether or not it contained carcinogens. Thank God he was taking Coldwater Canyon back into the Valley instead of the 405 lest half the city see him go bonkers.

The first thing he did when he got home was kick off his shoes, scoop Chump E. Chips off the couch, and plop down with him in the lounger. Jellwagger kicked up the footstool attached to the lounger and became so comfortable he doubted if he’d ever be able to leave that chair for the rest of his life. “What the hell’s going on, Chump? I tell ya, something’s hit me, and I’m still too dazed to know what. Exactly this time 48 hours ago I was sitting right here, munching the microwave ‘corn and throwing down the brews and watching what have you. Did I have a care anywhere on this blue planet? I’m sure I thought I did, but I can’t imagine what it would have been now. And I had you on my lap. Who’d’ve thought the next time you and I had this bonding moment, I’d’ve gone through so much?” He closed his eyes and let his head fall back. “Chump, if you tell me you’ve been sleeping for the past twenty-three hours, I’ll kick your little ass. You read me, Chump? By the way, you no longer have the stupidest name in the world. That distinction now belongs to this big ol’ limo driver named…wait for it, Chump…Flip.” Jellwagger already felt a torpor of sleep draping over his brain. “Oh my, Chump. This is snooze-tastic. I can see why you chose this racket. I’ll see you in the morning, okay?”

“I don’t think so.”

“What the fuck!”

Jellwagger opened his eyes to see Neckman zipping up his fly in the doorway where the living room met the hallway. “Sorry, I had to use the can.” Jellwagger thought his heart had stopped and that any second now he’d pass out from lack of air and die. What calmed him somewhat was seeing how calm Chump was. In fact, while Jellwagger stared at him and marveled at his composure, Chump adjusted his head until his snout was aimed at Jellwagger’s crotch. “The boss wants to see you, Jellwagger. Let’s go.” Neckman moved toward the door.

“Chump, look. Look, Chump E. Chips. It’s a stranger. An intruder, Chump. There’s someone in your domain who doesn’t fucking belong here.” Without budging so much as a millimeter, Chump sniffed. Then he let out a huge gust of air that always sounded to Jellwagger like a sigh of boredom. He grabbed Chump’s head and forced him to turn in Neckman’s direction. “Bark. At. Him. You son of a bitch. Bark!” When he let go, Chump turned back to his master’s crotch, sniffed, sighed, and closed his eyes. “You know what’s maddening about dogs? I’m talking about male dogs in particular. Like Chump here. Don’t get me wrong, I love the bastard to death. But you know what just drives me up the drywall sometimes? It’s that, when you get real pissed off at him and call him a son of a bitch, it doesn’t mean anything. I mean, that’s what he is. A son of a bitch. You’re not insulting him, you’re just stating the obvious.”

“Get your ass up, boy. Boss wants to see you now.”

“For example, it would be like if I got real pissed off at you, which I am right now, and said something like, ‘You human being!’ You see? Does that faze you? No, of course not. That’s what Chump E. Chips hears when I call him a son of a bitch. Or a son of a whore. Or a gay beagle. Look at him!”

Neckman now sighed himself. He opened the door and motioned for Jellwagger to follow.

“Which boss are we talking about here, Neckfuck? I seem to be collecting them at the moment.”

Neckman sighed and leaned a hand against the doorknob.

“Would everyone stop sighing?”

“Listen, you scrawny little thorn in my ass cheek. Get up off your ass and let’s go. I don’t have all fucking night.”

“What, you got plans?”

“None of your fucking business, Jellwagger. Come on. Get the fuck up or I’ll knock your ass out and carry you out of here.”

This was simply unbelievable. After the last couple of days he’d had, it was simply unfathomable that he’d come home to Carla’s hitman threatening bodily harm. It was so incredible, in fact, that Jellwagger couldn’t help laughing his ass off. Really, all he wanted to do was sleep. He didn’t want beer. He didn’t want food. All he wanted was to stay where he was and sleep for as long as his brain needed. That’s it. How could that possibly be too much to ask?

Neckman obviously misinterpreted the reason for Jellwagger’s hysterics. After grinding his teeth, whacking the doorknob, and growling some profanity, he walked over, stood above Jellwagger with a sneer on his face, and clocked him square in the jaw.

When he woke up, Jellwagger felt two contradictory sensations. First, a party raged inside his head. Revelers were dancing and grooving against the inner walls of his skull, oblivious to the agony they caused him. Second, the sensation outside of his head, under it to be exact, was absolutely wonderful. It felt like he was lying on the most comfortable pillow ever known to humankind. In fact, maybe this pillow hadn’t been crafted by human hands. Was Jellwagger dead? Had Neckman bumped him off?

“You awake, skinny bitch?”

Apparently not.

“You reading me, Jellwagger?”

“Not now, Mommy. I’m sleeping. I’ll look for a job tomorrow. I promise.”

“You sicko stalker. Either sit up right now or I’ll have Neckman clean your clock one more time.”

“Oh yes! Please, Mommy! Have Neckshit punch me again so I can continue experiencing this divine pillow!”

A room-temperature liquid splashed across Jellwagger’s face and up his nostrils. As if that wasn’t bad enough, he licked some of it off his lips only to discover that it was white wine. After six episodes, I’m sure you’ve noticed that Jellwagger was strictly a beer man. He wasn’t a liquor man. The Lagavulin was literally a gut-wrenching reminder of that. Nor was he a wine man. If he ever had to drink wine, say for a family holiday gathering or what have you, then it would always be red, and he’d only sip about half a glass. He would never, ever, ever…never!...drink white wine, family holidays be damned. You couldn’t pay our pal Jellwagger even to sniff white wine, let alone sip the shit. What made this face splashing particularly horrendous was that a few dribbles of the green grape toxin crept up his nose and most certainly would have landed on his poor exhausted brain had he not sat up and sneezed it all out. Jellwagger sneezed several times and swore he could hear Carla’s chuckling behind the sneezing noise. “I need a frickin’ napkin or something, man!” he said, trying hard not to cry while he wiped the wine from his eyes. He almost didn’t recognize Carla standing by that side table with her ponytail, a lavender T-shirt that hid most of her pendant, and jeans. Wow, look at her. Wasn’t she just the most adorable little button? She was wearing hardly any makeup and could’ve easily passed for a college coed or something. She refilled her glass with the sinister white stuff, grabbed a thick bunch of those little square coaster napkins, and gave them to Jellwagger before sitting on the other end of the sofa with her legs and bare toenail-polished feet curled under her.

“Stop crying, you skinny bitch.”

Damn her. For whatever reason, her stupid taunt not only didn’t help Jellwagger stem his tears, but made them flow with more gusto. “I’m not!”

“Right. I’m sure that’s just more white wine pouring out of your eyes.”

“Never! That’s evil shit, and I could never be evil enough to weep the juice of green grapes! Ever!” He took about half the deck of napkins and wiped the tears, wine, and snot off his face with about as much grace as a pig bathes in mud and shit. Then he got a look at his surroundings. First of all, this burgundy sofa he and Carla were sharing was huge. It was also plush and comfortable as hell. The pillow he’d been worshipping before Carla drowned him in wine was a thick square affair, one of four, two on his side, the other two on hers. The sofa dominated this room that was about the size of Jellwagger’s den back in Van Nuys, the room where he shut himself in to write Exit the Danish. Two colossal cushiony chairs faced the sofa from the other side of the room, and the side table with all the booze on it was opposite a wall covered end to end with bookshelves. Jellwagger wanted to get up and see what kind of shit this cat read, but he didn’t have the energy. That was, in fact, why he was crying. As much as he loathed white wine, being doused with it shouldn’t’ve induced tears. It was just that, right now, Jellwagger was exhausted. Truly, all the poor man wanted to do was close his eyes and conk out for a good week or so. Yet between the two of them, Pat Dinner and Carla Houde seemed bound and determined not to let him do that. “If you’re not going to let me sleep, I need beer. I need it now.”

“Behind you, champ.”

Jellwagger turned and found both a bottle of Blue Moon and a pint glass filled with the stuff standing on ornate gilded coasters on a small table next to the sofa. The glass even featured a wedge of orange on the rim as if prepared by a professional barkeep. Just because he wasn’t in the mood to thank her out loud doesn’t mean he wasn’t grateful as hell. The glass was freezing to the touch. So she was one of those people who kept the beer glasses in the freezer too. Another check in the plus category for good ol’ Comet Head, but Jellwagger was in no mood to be nice to her.

“So why no photos?”

He stopped mid sip and stared at her. What the hell was she talking about?

“I told you to follow Pale Cock from Spago. Did you?”

“Hell to the yes. I was with him for hours.” He took another sip. “Wait a sec. What did you just call him?”

“I bought you that phone for a reason.”

“Speaking of which, what kind of name is Just Because for a whorehouse?”

She looked at him with what he could’ve sworn was concern. Jellwagger was trying his damnedest to be thorny, but it wasn’t fazing her.

“Look, I followed him. I was with him. He invited me to drink with him and his buddies for a million hours last night. It was on this awesome roof bar downtown.”

“Standard.”

“Standard what?”

“That’s where he took you. The rooftop bar at the Standard Hotel. So what did you two talk about?”

Jellwagger racked his brain, but the Blue Moon was too tasty to let him concentrate. “I’m not being facetious at all when I say that I so want to remember what we talked about. But for the life of me I can’t.” Suddenly he remembered. Pat Dinner had hired him to be his gopher, but he’d be dead on this sofa if he told Carla that. “I do remember this one Asian guy who thought I was a spy or something.”

“Sam T. Lee.”

“That boy wouldn’t trust me as far as he could throw back a glass of that absolutely disgusting Lava Drooling.”

“Lagavulin?”

“That’s the horrible shit, thank you.”

“Pale Cock treated you to Lagavulin?”

“What is it with that nickname?”

“Jellwagger! Listen to me. I don’t have time for your skinny bitch antics. Did Pale Cock? Treat you? To Lagavulin?”

“It nearly cost me my life and, more importantly, my job. But yeah. The Man with the Most Irritating Laugh on Planet Earth bought me not one, not two, but three! Helpings of Lager Poison.”

Carla sipped her wine and looked over at the two chairs. “Unbelievable.” She grunted a laugh and ran a palm up and down one of her calves. “Well. Congratulations, bitch. He loves you.”

“He’s gay?”

Her hand stopped. She looked back up at him and took another sip. “Did you have fun?”

“No. I told you. I don’t do liquor. I’m strictly a beer man. You know. I like you better.”

“So you’re having fun now?”

“Hell to the no. All I want to do right now, Carla? Right this instant? Is close my eyes and go to sleep. I went straight from getting drunk with Pat to going to work for fourteen hours. And I can’t believe you’re not going to pay me!”

“Reap what you sow, whore stalker.”

“I don’t mind you calling yourself a whore, but I can’t help but wonder about the whole Pale Cock thing. Care to explain?”

Carla’s eyes left his yet again as she sipped her wine until it was empty. She got a refill and came back to the sofa.

“I tell ya, Carla. If I wasn’t so fucking tired, I’d take this frozen pint glass and throw it at you and your cute ponytail. I don’t give a shit if you’re a girl.”

She kept her eyes on the sofa a moment longer. “Look, Jellwagger.” Her eyes moved up to his. “I know Pale Cock. Okay? I was married to him. For four years. I dated him for over a year before that. I know there are plenty of relationships out there that last much longer, but still, half a decade of living with someone, sleeping with him, getting to know every possible thing you can about another human being. I know Pale Cock. Believe me, I know how much of a charismatic, oily bastard he can be. Okay? He’s like oil. At first you think you need him. It’s like, you can’t live without him. But then once he clings to you, you can’t shake him off. You want so much to break free of him, but you can’t. Forget his laugh. You’ll get used to that the more you stalk him. But what’s impossible to get used to is how much of an expert oily bastard he can be. I don’t know what it is. Some people are just born with that skill. He could convince the happiest bitch on Earth to jump off a bridge. The man could even convince a nun to come work for me.”

Jellwagger smirked into his glass before his face went stone straight. “You’re not kidding, are you? I mean about the nun thing. He really did convince a nun to be a whore for you.” She avoided his eyes. Jellwagger closed his. “Please. Please. In the name of the God all nuns worship. Don’t tell me that tart who stole my virginity used to be a nun.”

“She used to be called Sister Mary Helena.”

“Oh my God! I got deflowered by a fucking nun!”

“Stefania abandoned the order years ago, Jellwagger. Relax. And besides, since when do you have religious morals?”

“I mean… I mean… She was so mean! For the sake of all that’s holy, Carla. If you want to run an order of nuns-turned-sluts, fine. But you know, men pay good coin for taco if they can’t get it for free. The least your dirty angels could do is be nice about it.”

“First of all, bitch. Are you listening? Stefania is the only former nun in Just Because. But you know what? Your smart-ass mouth has given me an idea. Maybe I should get more of them. Do you have any idea how turned on guys get at girls dressed as nuns or Catholic students? If you don’t, that could only mean you’re gay. Real gay. I know other gay guys, and even they admit that the whole uniformed schoolgirl thing is smoking hot. So you know what this means, Jellwagger? The jury’s still out on your sexual orientation.”

“Fuck off.”

“Oh, and secondly? You didn’t pay for your taco. Stefania fucked you for free because I told her to. I’ll be God damned if I have a thirty-one-year-old virgin stalking for me. That’s just as well. She says you were the shortest lay of her holy life. If it wasn’t worth her time, it most certainly wouldn’t have been worth your money. Not that you make any.”

“Where’s Neckdick?”

“Why?”

“If he comes in here and knocks me out, will I wake up back in my lounger?”

“I’ll let you go soon, Jellwagger. But listen to me. Drop the antics and listen. I really do need you to do what I tell you. You stalked me, and I could just as well turn you in. But I don’t need the cops in my hair and neither do you. You read me, Jellwagger? Just follow him. Don’t be his friend. Don’t let the oil cling to you, or you’ll never get it off. He can lay that oil on thick. It makes me worry about you. I’m not being facetious when I say that, Jellwagger. I worry what might happen if you let Pale Cock sucker you in. Stefania’s an extremely bright girl. Ivy League education, the works. If Pale Cock can persuade her to drop her nun’s habit and take up escorting, who knows what he could convince you to do?”

Jellwagger polished off his Blue Moon and held up his glass.

“You won’t be here long enough for a second beer. Okay? Now listen. One more time, Jellwagger. Use your God damned walkie-talkie. I bought it so that I could not only keep you on a tight leash, but so that you could take photos of Pale Cock. Keep your distance, okay? It’s going to be awfully tough to do what I tell you if you go joyriding in his limo. If that’s not motivation enough, try this: Sam T. Lee will wipe the floor with your skinny bitch ass. If Pale Cock doesn’t figure out your game, Sam T. Lee most certainly will. Shit, for all we know, he already has. Maybe he did when you were in the limo. Or maybe it was your clumsy-ass fall at the Standard last night. Way to entertain the whole crowd, Jellwagger.”

Jellwagger slammed his glass down on the ornate coaster, hoping to crack it or something. The coaster, like its owner, wasn’t fazed by his fury. “I knew it! You had Neckass follow me, didn’t you? Didn’t you? For the sake of all that’s devious, Carla. How could you do it?”

“How? Simple. I knew I wouldn’t be able to trust you right out of the gate. You stalked me and still expect me to think you’re going to play me straight? It’s sad. Part of me actually thought I’d scared you enough that you would just follow the instructions and leave it at that. But no. You became pals with Pale Cock. I didn’t think there was a virgin’s chance in my house that he’d like you. But somehow, someway, you found a way to screw it up. Listen to this, though. Okay? The next time I tell you to follow him, I’ll tell Neckman to lay off. I promise. I don’t want you being all paranoid because that’ll distract you from the job at hand. There will be no excuse next time. Just tail him for as long as I tell you, take a few shots, and then e-mail me a report with the photos attached. Simple enough?” She downed the rest of her wine and checked her watch. “One more thing before I let you go, and this’ll show you how much of a saint I am and that any nun should be proud to have me as a boss. I’ll let Stefania fuck you again. Okay? For no charge. Lord knows you need the practice.”

“I absolve you of that pun.”

“And you also need to cool off a bit. Not only have I never met someone as sexually ambiguous as you, but I’ve never met someone so wound up.”

“Gee, Einstein. I wonder if my being awake for forty-eight straight hours has anything to do with that?”

“We’ll be in touch soon. Okay?” Carla held his eyes for several seconds now, the longest stretch of eye contact she allowed since he got here. Then she got up and headed for the door. “Beware the oil, bitch. Beware the oil.” She walked out and closed the door.

Now what? Wait here for Stefania?

He was just about to get up and head for the door when he heard movement beneath the sofa. When he leaned forward to see what it was, he jumped to his feet, lost his balance, and fell into one of the giant chairs. He sat there dumbstruck while Stefania, dressed as a Catholic schoolgirl, crawled out from underneath the sofa. She stood up, took off her spaghetti-thin gold watch, and placed it on the table next to Jellwagger’s empty glass. While his brain threw itself against his skull for something to say, Stefania slid off her panties and kicked them against the bookcase. The tart went through all these motions as if appearing from under the sofa was perfectly normal. Just when he was about to ask her what she’d been doing under there, it struck him how young she looked. When she’d deflowered him in his apartment, he’d been too dazed by the whole experience to pay much attention to her face. Now, though, and thanks to the diffuse lighting from all the table lamps, Jellwagger couldn’t help but notice that she looked even younger than Goldie from Spago. “How old are you, youngster?” he said.

She walked up and straddled him on the chair. “Let’s get this over with.” She started unzipping him.

“Wait! I’m serious. How old are you?”

“I’m legal, okay? You want me to suck you off first, or can we just cut to the chase?”

“If you put that mouth down there, I’ll explode in ten seconds.”

“You flatter yourself thinking you’d last that long.”

With two or three strokes from Stefania’s long tarantula-leg fingers, Jellwagger was pointing north. She straddled him and, with two or three hip thrusts, made him climax in just about the same amount of seconds as last time. And yes, it was less than ten.

After slipping on her panties and putting her watch back on, she poured herself a glass of red wine and sat down on the sofa with her legs crossed. She sipped the wine and stared at nothing in particular.

About five minutes of silence passed before Jellwagger realized his pants were still undone. He tucked his limp member back in there and zipped up. “Is Neckman going to take me home or what?”

“I’m twenty-six if you really must know.” She shot him a sidelong glance before staring back into space. “If that makes you feel any better. Does it?”

Jellwagger shook his head and shrugged.

“You are without a doubt the single worst fuck I’ve ever had, Jellwagger. I know you’re inexperienced. I know this was just your second time. But that’s just it. It’s your second time, not your first. You’re supposed to be improving. This was no different.”

It seemed imperative that he come back at her with something, but he just didn’t have the energy. It was all he could do, in fact, not to fall asleep right there.

“If it seems bizarre to you that I was eavesdropping from under the sofa, believe me, it was bizarre to me too. But Carla wants me in the loop on what she’s having you do. I haven’t a clue why, but there you have it. She didn’t want you to know I was here so you wouldn’t be uncomfortable. Apparently she thinks you have issues with women. Like you’re intimidated by us or something. Maybe that’s why she thinks the jury’s still out on if you’re gay or straight. As a former nun, I should say that my gay-dar is pretty sharp. You’re not gay. You suck at sex, but that doesn’t mean you like guys. It just means you need practice.”

“I can’t believe I lost my virginity to a nun.”

“The sooner you accept it, the better.”

“How did that happen?”

“Carla explained it to you. Pat Dinner and everything.”

“Let’s hear your version.”

“Nah.”

“She never did explain the whole Pale Cock thing.”

“Isn’t it obvious? Pat Dinner’s cock is white as milk. Pale as a ghost. And, if you want my opinion, it’s about as insubstantial as a ghost too. He might be better in the sack than you, Jellwagger, but once you master your tool, you’ll be outperforming a billionaire.”

They sat there for another minute or so before Jellwagger asked, “So why exactly did they get divorced? And whose decision was it?”

Neckman came in. He looked at Jellwagger, then at Stefania. “Sorry I’m late. Thought I’d give you a few extra minutes just in case.”

“If you’d shown up ten minutes ago, you’d still be late.”

“Ouch!” Neckman said. “Jellwagger, don’t you know how to treat a woman? Whatever. Get off your bony ass and let’s go.”

“Are you going to knock me out?”

“Up!”

The mercifully light traffic on the 405 prevented the awkward silence from lasting too long. Jellwagger didn’t utter a syllable the entire time. Neckman almost went the whole drive without speaking, but just as he let Jellwagger off, he muttered something like, “This God damned job.” Or maybe it was “This fucking job.” At any rate, it started with “This” and ended with “job”, and Jellwagger was pretty sure the two words were separated by profanity.

No matter, he forgot all about it when he walked into his apartment. A voicemail was waiting for him from his sister Jo. “And now for a transcontinental greeting from your big sister, Jellwagger. I hope this finds you happy and healthy. Because if you’re not happy and healthy, my impending visit will probably be complicated. No, kiddo, your ears do not deceive you. I’m flying out tomorrow.”

To be continued...