Between the Bridge and the River (29 page)

So the brain-damaged, dentally challenged Scottish holyman in the orange dress; the street-fighting, gay Watusi; the crackhead on the lam; and the ninety-pound stripper peeled out of Delray in the purple, pimped-out Chevy Caprice and headed for the Florida Turnpike.

An accident waiting to happen.

THE SHOOT FOR
KILLING BY STARLIGHT
WAS A NIGHTMARE
, even by Hollywood standards. The production was six months late in starting because when Borg, the director, turned up to look at the sets that had been built on the soundstages in Burbank, he went apeshit. He screamed and threw his Stubb and Flask double Americano with an extra shot at the plywood backdrop that was meant to be Tootsiepop Ted’s cell the night before his execution.

“It’s like a fecking TV show! Is he presenting
American Funny Veedyos
or is he fecking waiting for hexocution? This is fecking sheet! I cain’t work with this sheet!”

And he stormed off the movie, going straight to Van Nuys Airport, where he boarded a chartered Gulfstream V and flew back to Scandinavia.

As he boarded the plane his coffee was running down the fake prison walls, and the design team that had worked through the night to get the work done in time stared blankly at one another. There was nothing wrong with the set, of course, but Borg had to establish that he was an artist and was in charge of this production and that he would not be pushed around by the suits, even if they were paying his wages. This is standard industry practice for big-time moviemakers.
Line producers, the people who actually physically produce (orchestrate the production of) the films, call this “throwing the toys from the stroller.” It allows the directors to feel powerful and everyone else to feel they are in the presence of a genius, so no one really minds except the people who are paying for it.

In this particular case, though, Borg had an ulterior motive. He had been offered a large sum of money to direct a commercial for Svendesson Herring Fisheries in his native Norway. It would only take him two weeks to prep and shoot the commercial but the dates clashed with the movie, so he used the delay, when he was supposedly frustrated about the production values in Hollywood, to film a trawler full of supermodels in wet-weather gear having netloads of live fish dumped on them to a Lenny Kravitz backing track.

The TV ad was shown in more than fifty countries and Svendesson’s share of the herring market went up by 8 percent.

This hiccup should only have delayed the film by two weeks but then the revised schedule clashed with Meg Roberts’s publicity schedule on another movie she had made the year previously,
Calendar of Love,
the tender story of a Louisiana woman who learns to love again after her husband is killed by an escaped bear. It was a terrible movie, written by the Same Idiot who penned the self-help book
Men Are Asteroids, Women Are Meteorites
that Meg was addicted to.

She could not back out of her duties to
Calendar
since she was also the executive producer and had her own money in the project. This delay in turn ran into Leon’s shooting schedule for
Oh Leon!,
which was going into its fifth season and which he was contractually obligated to.

Guillame and Claudette used the delays to have an extended holiday touring South America. In Colombia they were received with great pomp and ceremony by the government. The president, Juan Carlos Menendez, who would later be assassinated by his own son, had loved
Pamplemousse
and was desperate to meet Guillame. Meg and Leon’s relationship had taken a downturn the night of the cast party when he drooled over Claudette, embarrassing her in front of everyone with his obvious infatuation, so by the time everyone was ready
to begin shooting, the male and female leads were now ex-boyfriend and ex-girlfriend, which led to a frosty environment on the set, to say the least.

Meg was now dating a man she had met through the Church of Brainyism, Crag Harding, the former pro wrestler who was trying to break into action movies. He came to work every day with her. Every time he saw Leon he glared at him with his trademark “scary stare” that he had used to great effect in the World Wrestling Foundation and that he would later employ as the angry robot hell-bent on revenge in the highly successful
Killdroid
and
Killdroid 2: Return of the Killdroid.

Leon complained to Saul that Crag Harding made him uncomfortable: “I can’t work with that psycho gorilla around, he’s freaking me out.”

Saul talked to Meg: “Please don’t bring Crag to the set. He’s freaking Leon out.”

Meg talked to Saul: “Get out of my trailer, you fat pervert.”

And things went downhill from there.

By the time the shooting actually started, the head of Uniwarn, who had green-lit the project, Mike Thorne, had been fired and replaced by a new man, the legendary Jeffrey Wiesner, Hollywood’s Mr. Fixit (even if it’s not broken or even in need of maintenance). Wiesner, an ex–car salesman from Baltimore, had been a high-ranking executive at the Disney Corporation and had had great success with a series of feel-good family comedies he’d commissioned. He had a reputation as a “very strong personality,” which meant he was a megalomaniac and a bully.

Wiesner was delighted to inherit a project that had Janus Borg and Meg Roberts and Leon Martini attached, even if it meant dealing with Saul Martini, who was renowned as a deviant monster. What he was less thrilled about was the script itself.

Trundle’s script was excellent and covered the guilt and conflict of Tootsiepop Ted and the anguish of his victims along with the frustration of the law-enforcement agent who doggedly pursued him, but Wiesner felt it was too dark and much too grisly.

He wanted changes.

He called Saul to his office and told him that he wanted less killing and that more should be made of the relationship between the policeman and his wife, which should be less tense and more lighthearted. He also felt they should have a kid, in fact a couple of kids, and a dog.

Also he wanted Leon to sing in the movie.

Saul tried to get around him but Wiesner would not budge. He wanted changes or he would cancel the whole thing, big-time stars and director or not.

This was the reason Wiesner had been hired by the board of Uniwarn: He would not cater to the artistic types whom they saw as ruining the industry.

Saul hired Zabadan again to make some more changes and find places to put in songs. As production continued, Wiesner’s demands on the script got more and more ludicrous, and he forced them to reshoot a vast array of scenes. This in turn forced the budget up, which Saul, as producer, would be blamed for.

Killing by Starlight
became almost unrecognizable from the original script. The homicide detective played by Leon now sang at every opportunity—in the bar with his cop buddies, in the house to get his kids to sleep, in a flashback when he sang to his new bride at their wedding, and in one memorable scene he crooned a sensitive ballad to a corpse hidden tastefully under a blanket in the city morgue. The murders were reshot to ensure there was no blood and the victims were seen as to somehow deserve their fate for their life of prostitution. Meg’s character, the policeman’s wife, was given a few monologues where she peeled an orange and talked to her gay friend about her feelings.

Of course, the changes did not go unnoticed by the actors or director. Leon whined a little but was secretly relieved to have singing added, since this was one area where he knew he was a star. Guillame complained loudly that his character was ridiculous and point-blank refused to wear the “evil eyebrows” that Wiesner wanted. He actually barged into Wiesner’s office and demanded to be released from
the movie. Wiesner told him no and managed to placate him with a million-dollar bonus. Guillame was French and an artist but he wasn’t an idiot, and anyway, Wiesner backed down on the eyebrows. Meg actually liked the changes and called Wiesner to thank him. Janus Borg didn’t give a damn and nobody cared what Trundle thought.

Saul was crushed, though. All this time he had been in charge, he had steered Leon’s career and been the one who took care of business, but he sensed, as the might of Wiesner and Uniwarn took over, that his grip on his brother was slipping. They hardly talked and he knew that in his brother’s eyes Wiesner had diminished him. He was no longer in control of
Killing by Starlight
or, it seemed, anything else. Toward the end of the shoot, Wiesner, who was a lot happier with the way things were going, called Leon into his office. He told him how happy he was that the changes had been made, and that he felt this was going to be a great big hit movie for both of them. Saul thanked him and agreed, wary of Wiesner’s good humor. Wiesner said that he’d had some market research done and found that the title,
Killing by Starlight,
which personally he loved, didn’t test well. People thought it was a horror movie.

Saul said that in a way it was but Wiesner plowed on, ignoring him. He told Saul he had at great expense hired a firm to find the top dozen words that made modern-day Americans feel good. He wanted to have a title that contained at least some of these words.

The words were, in no particular order:
wedding, mega, celebrity, America
or
American, friend
or
friendly, shrimp, dollars, holy
(although this word had actually tied with
bikini
),
vacation, big, united,
and
buffet.

Wiesner said he had considered a bunch of new titles for the movie, including
One United American, The Shrimp Vacation, Holy Bikini!,
and
Megadollar Buffet,
but had settled on
Big Friendly American Wedding Celebrity
because it contained the most words and it was truest to the plot.

“How can you call a movie about a serial killer who ate the eyes of his victims
Big Friendly American Wedding Celebrity
?” yelled Saul, finally at the end of his tether.

Wiesner explained, “Because in the movie, the crimes are
big,
the cop played by your brother is
friendly
and
American,
there is a flashback to his
wedding
—with Meg Roberts, for Christ’s sake—and she is a
celebrity
.”

Saul slumped in his chair.

“Plus,” Wiesner continued reasonably, “I am the head of the studio and I can do what I fucking want. Now get out.”

And out Saul went. Every night.

In frustration he ate more, drank more, fucked harder, and took more Vicodin, his rage and despair taken out on his unfortunate body or the unfortunate bodies of the call girls who turned up at his home in the Hills.

The reshoots and script changes meant the movie ran over-schedule by an extra three months and by the time shooting finished Saul was a wreck.

Leon returned to the sitcom, happy to be back. He didn’t tell Saul but he started attending Brainyism meetings and got hooked up to the Boondtdock.

Meg broke up with Crag because he was afraid of intimacy. She got bored with Brainyism and moved on to hypnoyoga.

Guillame and Claudette returned to Paris, relieved to be home. Claudette made Guillame swear he would never work in America again, Guillame agreed, and he bought her a stupidly expensive necklace with some of his million-dollar bonus.

When he died she gave it to UNICEF to raise money for children who needed it.

Claudette was supportive of Guillame during the nightmare shoot in Hollywood, so she never mentioned what happened with Leon when they were there. It would only have made him angry and he already had enough on his plate.

She often thought about telling him afterward but he died before she could, and it wasn’t that important anyway.

THE NIGHT THAT GUILLAME AND CLAUDETTE
arrived in Los Angeles they had been having one of their rare arguments. Their plane had been delayed coming out of Charles de Gaulle due to a baggage handlers’ dispute about tea breaks, then the flight itself had been bumpy and busy, so neither of them had slept, and so when they finally arrived at their hotel in L.A., Claudette had wanted to go to bed. Guillame said no, they had to go to the party, he would not go alone, and it was disrespectful of her not to come with him.

She was too tired and grumpy to realize he was afraid not to go and afraid to go alone, so they had snapped at each other but she relented, and in the back of the car that Saul had sent for them, as they made their way over to the party, she leaned over and kissed his ear and tickled him until he was himself again.

Everybody fussed over them at the party. Meg Roberts, who seemed a little vivid in person until she explained to them that she’d just had an intensive face peel, had presents for both of them. She gave them signed copies of
Men Are Asteroids, Women Are Meteorites
and a candle each. One had the word
serenity
written on it, the other had the word
achieve
.

It was all very polite and friendly. Everyone congratulated Guillame on his award and said his performance in
Pamplemousse
was remarkable and how much they had loved him and the film, although they didn’t mention that they hadn’t actually seen it.

Leon was very obviously taken with Claudette and he followed her around like a puppy. She was charmed by his enthusiasm and Guillame didn’t mind; he had seen men have this reaction to her before and trusted her, and also he had been drawn into a conversation about his character with the director.

Borg thought that it would be great for the movie the more normal and suburban Ted appeared so that when he carried out his crimes, the murders—which he was determined to shoot in graphic detail and fuck the studio if they had a problem with that—the contrast would be spectacular.

Guillame concurred, saying that he took the role because of the interesting juxtaposition between bourgeois family man and serial killer.

Although it was obvious how to portray a killer in the act of killing, Guillame wondered aloud how to portray normality.