Scruples (71 page)

“You damn well are!”
he shouted. The air between quivered, with amazement. Neither of them could quite believe that they had become embattled so suddenly. They glared at each other in a momentary, baffled hush. Finally Spider spoke.

“There must be something wrong with me, Valentine. Of course you’re not accountable to me. I don’t know why I said that—just because we’ve known each other so long I guess.”

“It still doesn’t give you the right—”

“No. Forget it, OK?” He looked at his watch. “I’m late, see you tomorrow.”

As he retreated hastily, closing the door behind him, Valentine sat motionless in her chair, stunned, puzzled, shaken by the intensity of the gust of emotion that had been released into the air. Elliott had spoken without any right, without any reason. She should be furious. She’d been furious for less cause. Yet she felt—pleased. Pleased? Yes, unquestionably pleased. What a terrible bitch she must be. So he thought she was accountable to him, did he? An involuntary smile crossed her face without her knowledge.

As several weeks passed without
Mirrors
being shifted from the theaters in which it was currently playing, Vito became increasingly confident that Oliver Sloan’s understanding of the best way to make a buck, combined with the unwilling corroboration of Arvey’s sensitive digestive system, had triumphed over Arvey’s attack of bad judgment.

However, Arvey’s personal animosity to Vito was more virulent than ever, and he showed his spite and thwarted wrath by placing only a bare minimum of trade ads in the
Hollywood Reporter
and
Daily Variety
. Under normal circumstances with a top-grossing picture, the studio would have thrown the success of
Mirrors
in their competitors’ teeth. No, thought Vito, he could expect nothing from the studio, but the beauty of it was that he didn’t need them now. Two things told the only story he cared about:
Variety’s
weekly box-office chart, on which
Mirrors
remained number one, and the yearly lists of the “Ten Best” pictures, as judged by critics all over the country. All of them, to date, included
Mirrors
. Vito decided to proceed with the plan he had been forming since he first saw the answer print.

Several days before Christmas Billy drove out to Venice, that raunchy, Coney Island-like seaside colony of Los Angeles where a number of slapdash Bohemian houses still have not been replaced by the rapidly growing mass of new condominiums. She was going to
visit
Dolly for lunch and see for herself how she was feeling halfway into her sixth month of pregnancy. Loaded with Christmas presents, Billy climbed to Dolly’s two-room apartment on the third floor of an old stucco house, painted pale pink with magenta trim, on a street where everyone seemed to know everyone else, where neighbors chatted as they basked in the winter sun in their front yards or watered their potted plants or avoided skateboarding kids. So far none of these houses had been sold to developers, and Dolly’s landlord, a captain in the Los Angeles Fire Department, managed to pay the escalating taxes on his modest but increasingly valuable house by renting his top floor, now that his children had left home.

One look at Dolly convinced Billy that the pregnancy was going well. She stood in affectionate contemplation of the blooming milkmaid of a girl, euphoric, rosy, blessed with positively Restoration amplitude, although totally lacking the Restoration waist, or any waist at all.

“You’re a toothsome dish,” she told Dolly, surveying her from all sides.

“What does that mean?” Dolly asked, laughing, demurely delighted with her majestic belly.

“Tasty, I think. Anyway it sounds good.”

“Wait till you try what I made for lunch, Milton Berle’s Gefilte Chicken à la Fish,” Dolly pronounced impressively.

“What on earth—?”

“I almost did the Senator Jacob Javits Cheese Blintzes or the Irving Wallace Matzo Brei, but then I remembered how careful you are about gaining weight so I compromised.”

“Where
did you get those—those recipes?” Billy asked, torn between laughter and skepticism. Dolly produced an oblong pink-and-red book.

“It’s the
Celebrity Kosher Cookbook
—it’s marvelous. Yesterday I practiced the Barbara Walters Stuffed Cabbage.”

“But why?”

“I figured that as long as I wasn’t working, I should do something useful. Remember what you told me about finding some wonderful Jew? Wouldn’t it help if I were a terrific kosher cook?”

“Unquestionably,” said Billy dryly. “But is this the time to catch one?”

“Some men are attracted to pregnant women,” Dolly answered impishly. “Especially when they can make a fabulous Neil Diamond Pot Roast. Actually, I guess I’ll have to wait until after the baby is born, but you just never know, do you? The other day I went to see
Mirrors
again—it’s my eleventh time—and about fifty people asked me for an autograph, and three guys asked me out for dinner.”

“Did you go?” breathed Billy.

“Of course not—weirdos, all of them. But still, they asked.”

“What’s it like,” asked Billy curiously, “seeing
Mirrors
with an audience, all the way through?”

“Don’t
you
know? Billy, you’ve seen it over and over!”

“Only in an editing room or in a mixing studio, never with strangers, not where they have to pay to see it.”

“That’s simply terrible.” Dolly was shocked. “Why, the audience is the best part of all. You know the scene after I’ve told Sandra how Hugh really feels about her and she finds him on the cliff—”

“Know it?” Billy groaned. “I know it so well I think I wrote it.”

“But, Billy, that’s when they start to cry—all over the theater you absolutely feel the emotion growing, swelling, people responding—I even get tears in my eyes.”

“But, my God, Dolly, you were standing right there when Fifi made them do it over for the sixth time and Sandra kept complaining about the burrs in her shoes and Svenberg was screaming that the light was going—”

“I forget,” Dolly said stubbornly. “I just don’t remember all of that—it’s all fresh to me, each time. Look, let’s go together, after lunch, OK?”

“Your twelfth time and you still want to see it?”

“Maybe I’ll get to be like one of those
Sound of Music
addicts, remember? Some of them saw it seventy-five times or more. And they weren’t even
in
it—don’t ever tell Vito, but mostly I go to watch my own performance. You know all those interviews when actors say they never see their own films? I don’t understand that—I just adore seeing myself up there!” She whispered the last words, hugging herself gleefully, half guiltily, half pridefully. “I guess I’m just a ham.”

“You’re unreal,” said Billy. “You’re a most beautiful and touching actress—I’ve told you before but you’ll never trust me.”

Dolly turned aside bashfully. She could never quite believe or accept praise for doing what came so naturally.

“Here, I almost forgot,” she said, “your Christmas present.” She handed Billy a filled, covered earthenware crock. “It’s George Jessel’s Chicken Liver Pâté. You won’t believe it!”

“I don’t already,” Billy answered.

Vito wanted to get a Best Picture nomination for
Mirrors
. He hadn’t dared to do more than dream of it until he saw the answer print, but from that day on the thought was never out of his head.
Mirrors
was the finest production of his working career. In it he had achieved a film that became far more than the sum of its parts, expertly chosen though they were. It
lived
with a beating pulse of its own; it
worked
on every level from comedy through poetry. It would be a landmark picture, he felt in his bones, but first he had had to wait for the confirmation of the rest of the world to justify his belief. Until the reviews came in, until the box-office responded, and, finally, until the picture appeared on the “Ten Best” lists, it would have been an exercise in wistfulness to do more than dream. But now he had the necessary prerequisites to act.

Mirrors
had all the credentials it needed, but it lacked the one thing commonly considered necessary for a shot at one of the five Academy nominations: studio support. Lavish advertising campaigns, unabashed promotion, specially hired publicists, all these could have been provided by the Arvey Film Studio, but Vito had no illusions. Curt Arvey wouldn’t spend one extra penny to push
Mirrors
. Perhaps, in fact certainly, if Arvey had been convinced that this small picture had an excellent chance to actually win the Oscar, he would have brought himself around to seeking a nomination, since an Oscar means an average addition of ten million dollars to the box-office gross. But Arvey could see, as could Vito, that the past year had produced a number of superstar, super-expensive films, which had powerful studios behind each one of them. Any one of them could legitimately merit the Oscar. A nomination for
Mirrors
would only mean some glory for Vito, and Arvey would travel far to prevent this, even if some of the glory could be expected to rub off on him.

So, quite simply, Vito would do it alone.

He pondered the membership of that group of some three thousand three hundred working people so elaborately called the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Only this carefully limited number of people was entitled to even
decide
for which films and performers and craftsmen votes could be cast, something comparable to permitting only the population of Westport, Conneticut, to vote for President of the United States.

The Best Picture nominations are the only ones voted on by the entire membership of the Academy. Nominations in all other categories are voted on by the branches involved, so that only actors nominate actors, only art directors nominate art directors, and so on. However, the final voting in all categories is by all members. This meant that Vito had to influence every one of the Academy members in order to get a Best Picture nomination.

When a studio is actively promoting a film for a nomination, it gives any number of special, luxurious screenings at the studio’s expense. Vito couldn’t afford that. But he had never forgotten the response of the four secretaries at the first screening of
Mirrors
. He narrowed his entire campaign to capturing the attention of the wives and the mothers and the sisters and the daughters and the cousins and the aunts of the male members, who are a preponderance in every branch of the Academy.

Get the women, he told himself, and they’ll take care of the men.

Vito sent invitations to afternoon screenings to the women who lived in the residential communities all over Los Angeles in which sound men and cameramen and editors and short-subject men make their homes. Every single day, from Christmas until the day during the first week in February when the ballots for the nominations are filled out, there were at least three, and sometimes as many as seven, screenings of
Mirrors
, playing from Culver City to Burbank, from Santa Monica to the far stretches of the San Fernando Valley. Vito didn’t care if the female relatives of the Academy members brought every woman friend they had; he simply wanted them to see
Mirrors
. “Operation Matinee,” as Billy dubbed it, was a complicated affair logistically. Vito had to find local movie houses that were empty in the afternoon, make deals with managers, borrow prints, arrange for their delivery and return, and see to rounding up projectionists.

“How’s it going, darling?” Billy asked, looking at Vito with worry. During the tension of the shoot he had never seemed so preoccupied. Stubbornly, in her opinion, stupidly, he wouldn’t use her money for this project.

“I’m perfectly swell, except for a nasty heart murmur, those mysterious shooting pains in my head, a spastic colon, and fallen arches. But I can’t complain, I think my hearing is coming back in one ear, and I barely fainted at all yesterday.”

“Are you even sure it’s worth it?” she wondered, refusing to be put off by his diversionary tactics.

“No. Of course not. Sometimes there are only a dozen women at the matinees, and for all I know, they are just somebody’s curious neighbors. Sometimes there are almost a hundred. But if I don’t do it, nobody will. And if I don’t make the attempt, I’ll never forgive myself.”

“I think
Mirrors
will be nominated simply on merit!” she flashed.

“I wish you were a member of the Academy.”

Vito never knew how or why
Mirrors
was one of the five pictures nominated in the second week of February 1978. The element that finally swung the vote might have been actors voting for a picture in which three almost unknown performers were given a chance to do their stuff; it might just have been Fifi’s year for a nomination; it might have been the more than three hundred Academy writers voting to salute a film that depended so much on a sensitive script; it might have been because people had wanted to see a love story or a film of exceptional visual beauty, or liked to cry at a happy ending—or even because of his matinees. Afterward, it was as impossible to single out one single reason, although it was as irresistible a subject of conversation as trying to decide which ethnic or socioeconomic group was responsible for the election of a President of the United States.