The Movie (4 page)

Out of the corner of his eye Sam recognized David Tauber’s neat Lamborghini parked in the space directly opposite his. It .was the best unreserved space in the lot, which meant that David Tauber had got there first. Probably around five-thirty a.m. He smiled briefly; Tauber had wanted him to notice that, and he had. Of course. After twenty-five years as an agent, SamuelJ. Kendrick II had acquired the habit of noticing pretty much everything. So Tauber-young, hungry, ambitious-was already fluent in Hollywood’s secret code. Look, boss, I was in first. Well, OK, kid, Sam thought, dismissing it. David Tauber wasn’t important right now. Eleanor Marshall was.

Don’t sweat the small stuff, and remember, it’s all small stuff.. The nineties’ stress-relief phrase of choice. Sam snorted:

they were wrong on two counts. One, ‘Don’t sweat the small stuff’ wasn’t a pressure valve, it was a commandment. If you sweated the small stuff, you were dead. You’d drown. Two, it wasn’t all small stuff. Some of it was very big stuffindeed, and if you planned on being a player it was highly advisable to know the difference.

Focus, focus, focus. Something else he’d learnt. In this town, where everybody had a million projects a day, focus was absolutely key. If you had a big star, satisfy that star first. If there was a bidding war for some hot property-be that a script, an actor or a director-aim your fire at that until the opposition were blown away. Maybe he didn’t return a couple calls he should have for a couple days. So? That’s what kids like Tauber were for. And if you had a major lroblem, you thought about nothing else and concentrated on nothing else until that problem was solved.

Sam Kendrick International had a major problem. But after five days of brainstorming ways to get around it, his reliable subconscious had started coming up with suggestions. And the first suggestion was Eleanor Marshall.

‘Mr Kendrick, Mrs Kendrick called from the country club about catering for your party next week. Mr Ovitz’s office called ten minutes ago. Fred Florescu rang at seven-ftfteen,’ said Karen, his assistant, briskly. She had learnt long ago not to waste Sam’s time with ‘Good morning’ or other pleasantries of that sort. ,‘Plus thirty or so more which I’ve prioritized on your desk. Debbie has clipped the trades and the papers for you. Joanie has stacked most of the mail, there’s just the Zach Mason contract and the coverage on Hell’s Daughter that you might want to check out yourselE. And everyone’s ready for the meeting at eight.’

Kendrick nodded absently. ‘Fred called, huh? That’s good. I’ll get back to him and CAA now. You can call my wife and tell her that whatever she wants is fine by me.’

He tried not to show his annoyance, How many. times

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did he have to tell Isabelle not to bother him at the office with this dumb domestic trivia? As if he had ever given two pins for what interior designer they used, which benefit they attended or whatever idiotic food fad was being served up on smart LA tables that week. Of course, Isabelle hved for that stuff. No, the calls were a power play, pure and simple. She liked asserting her position, knowing that no matter what superstar or studio head was trying to reach him, she would always be put through first, her call would always be on top of the pile.

Kendrick strode down the soft grey carpeting of the corridor towards his offices. You had to pass through three outer rooms, each with its own secretary and personal assistant, before you gained entrance to the inner sanctum. Standard superagent fare, but also, these days, pretty necessary. It was barely half-seven, and he’d already had thirty call.

‘Good morning, Mr Kendrick’ ‘Morning, Sam. Looking good.’ ‘Great to see you, boss.’

Agents and assistants passed him, smiling, waving, kissing ass. Only to be expected. At SKI, Sam Kendrick was king. He’d ceased to be tickled by the routine morning contest to catch his eye.

leaching his. office, Kendrick slipped into his black leather Eames chair and reached for the phone without looking at it, a reflex movement. He left a message for Mike Ovitz - Christ knew when the two of them would ever get five minutes free at the ame time - and tried Fred Florescu at home. The hottest young director in Hollywood and a new SKI client; signing Fred had been one of the few bright spots in a bleak fall.

He picked up on the third ring. ‘Fred Florescu.’

‘Hi, Fred, it’s Sam.’

A pleased chuckle. ‘That was quick.’

‘You’re the first call,’ Sam lied easily. He was a master of

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the art of flattery, amongst other things. He knew how to make people feel good without sliming up to them. In the

movie business, that made a nice change.

‘Why? Because art comes first?’

Kendrick snorted rudely. ‘You’re the artist, buddy. I’m the businessman. The only art I care about is the little ink sketch they do on the hundred-dollar bill.’

Florescu laughed, delighted. ‘Sam, you have no shame.’ ‘Did you hire me to be a blushing violet?’

More flattery. The superagent humbles himself before the talent. I work for you. You’re the boss. Well, unless you were Julia Roberts or John Grisham, talent reports to its agent most of the time. Talent that forgets this simple rule tends to have a short-lived career.

‘You’re the only guy I know who watches Wall Street as a motivational tool, instead of a wan’ring tale.’

Now Kendrick was laughing. ‘You’re calling me about…’

‘You hinted you had a line on a certain ex-rock star. Is it true? I’d like to work with him, if it is.’

Fhe first real satisfaction of the week flooded through Kendrick’s lean torso. He had the system down so well, now his stars were starting to package themselves!

Packaging. What an ‘8os concept. What a beautiful concept. Everybody claimed to have invented it, CAA, ICM, William Morris, you name it. The truth was that it had just evolved, like Venus rising from the waters, like Pallas Athena springing fully formed from the head of Zeus. ‘Packaging’ was the name given to the process whereby an agency took one of its star actors or actresses, or preferably both, hooked them up with a director it represented and a script whose writer was being repped by their literary department, and sold the whole project to a studio as a package deal. This ensured that agency commission was maximized, all the credit went to your own firm, and maybe some client you wanted to break got

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their first big credit on the back of one of your major stars. Of course, it was your own big-name clients that you had to sell it to, but a package deal was worth any amount of bowing, scraping and downright begging. The studios hated it, because they had to pay through the nose-always cheaper to make a movie la carte - and because every big package deal further increased the power of the agency shopping it. On the other hand, it minimized risk-all that talent, washed and ready to serve right on the table. Not

that even incredibly large amounts of talent could guarantee filled movie theatres. Look at Steven Spielberg, Julia loberts, Bob Hoskins and Pobin Williams in Hook. Kendrick winced at the memory. Can you say “over budget’? At least that turkey hadn’t been his fdm.

No, Sam never bothered to claim that he’d fathered the packaging idea. He hadn’t, and he didn’t care about being first. He only cared about being best. Fifteen years ago, he’d spotted the brilliance of the idea early on and had started tying his small, classy roster of talent together for deals. Within ten months the Sam Kendrick Agency had shifted from being a Tiffany boutique to a medium-size ‘corner’ with an unparalleled fee rate for its clients. In another ten, they were Sam Kendrick International, with as many cheesy superstars on their books as critically acclaimed Oscar-winners, and offices in Pome and London. Sam loved it. He’d never looked back.

Packaging had made him a star; not the kind of star he bought and sold, whose box office dwindled as their looks failed, but the real kind, the typetrade.magazines referred to using their first names alone. The kind that pinned up the firmament, not merely glittered within it. It had made Sam his first million, and then his first ten million. But right now it was the cause of his problems.

Times were lean, margins were small, and the major film studios had become far less accommodating than most of the big players were used to. Since the recession of 99o-93

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the leisure dollar had shrank considerably; everybody who used to cackle about the entertainment industry being depression-proof had proved horribly wrong. The record, TV, magazine and film industries had all suffered; Ken drick could still remember the wave after wave of redundancies and big-budget movies that stiffed all summer long in those two terrible years, 9 and 9z. At the same time, star power, and price, had increased to ridiculous proportions as studios searched desperately for ways to ensure recouping their investment. Of course, there’s no such thing, and gradually it became clear that even the biggest star and the most well-worn formula couldn’t guarantee a hit. File that under Last Aaion Hero. Anyway,

, they became even more terrified of green-lighting anything; money committed is monkey risked, right? And when Demi Moore demanded $7 million for the third Barman movie, they told her to take a hike.

It had been a lean few years for SKI. Nobody was starving - they repped too many big names for that to happen - but the studios had turned aside all their package deals, permitting only named stars to sign up for fees which were high, but, despite the best efforts of Sam and his minions to the contrary, still well within the accepted ballpark. But no packages. No blockbusting movies stamped ‘Property of Samuel Jacob Kendrick’ on them in big gold letters. Not ,that the other agencies hadn’t had problems, but at least they’d seen.one or two fat deals come together. SKI had been coasting. And you know the old story about the LA agencies being like sharks? If they don’t move forward, they die. As far as Sam Kendrick was concerned, a truer word was never spoken.

He needed to get a package deal on screen, a major movie that would grab all the headlines in Variety and blow away his critics. And he needed it fast. Only last week, James Falcon, the fortysomething superstar who:d been

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with Sam for ten years, had had his hwyers call to say he was now represented byJeffBerg at ICM.

That was when the situation had shifted out of yellow alert. It couldn’t be more than a week before that little snippet leaked to the papers, and then everybody else would be considering their position… and the shark infested waters would be alive with movement, circling, circling, as the other finns scented blood and moved in for the kill.

Sam knew the score. He’d done it often enough himself.

Hence the full staff meeting at eight o’clock this morning.

Hence his delight that Fred Florescu wanted to work with David Tauber’s new client.

Hence the reason that he’d woken up this morning with Eleanor Marshall branded into his brain.

‘I shouldn’t tel/ you that, man. Confidentiality,’ he

replied, carefully keeping the elation out of his voice. ‘Bullshit, Sam. Anyway, that’s a yes.’ ‘How do you figure that out, Fred?’

‘You can’t have confidentiality with someone you don’t represent.’

Sam chuckled darkly. ‘Wait a second.’ He scribbled his name on the bottom of Zach Mason’s contract, holding the receiver over the pen. ‘Hear that sound? Know what that is?’

‘No. What is it?’

‘That’s the sound of ink drying. On our deal with Zach Mason,’ Sam confm’ned, feeling the satisfaction return.

Fred Florescu’s voice was a hiss of drawn-in breath. ‘Think you can get us together?’

‘Think, nothing. I know you’re the only director for him, Fred.’

‘I’d appreciate it. West of the Moon was a really vital record in my life.’

That took Kendrick aback for a second. Christ, he’d

forgotten Florescu was only twenty-nine. He was a fan of Mason’s band! He was just a kid himself! Lord, that he should live to see the day when a red-hot director was panting to work with a rock star because of the guy’s music I Slackers my sweet ass he thought silently. They’re the pushiest little bastards since the fifties. And they gaze so hard at their own navels it’s a miracle they don’t all walk around cross-eyed.

‘You know what I’m saying? Zach Mason is, like, a prophet of his generation. 1Keally on the level. The shit he was singing about was important, Sam. Dark Angel are a major loss to us. I want to put him in a movie very badly, I hope I can help him share some of that vision.’

Kendrick was staggered. Not only was Florescu coming

‘ out with all this garbage, was that humility he heard in his tone? Fred Florescu, the director who famously told the studio head on his last picture to go fuck himself, was speaking about some two-bit singer as if he was his personal god. Sam wondered how Florescu would feel if he knew what David Tauber had told him - that Dark Angel had split up over a petty squabble about T-shirt royalties, and Zach Mason himself was a spoilt brat who threw a tantrum if the mineral water in his dressing room was the wrong brand. A real primadonna whose only concern was the megabuck career of one Zachary Mason. David was a smart kid; he could see that right off. Yolanda Henry, the band’s manager from the beginning, hadn’t wanted to kiss Mason’s ass in the way that twelve million records had led him to expect, plus she thought it was a dumb idea for him to dabble in movies. The woman was another of these music junkies, reckoned that time spent away from the studio or the stage was time wasted. No wonder her little canary was ready to sing a new tune. David Tauber was to be commended for checking out the opportunity; he’d kissed up to Zach like he was Roxana Felix herself, and promised him the sun, moon and stars,

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yesterday. It had taken the ‘prophet of his generation’ exactly ten days to spht his band, dump the woman who’d discovered him sleeping rough and busking in Miami, and ship out to LA from New York, bringing with him only the second ray of sunshine SKI had seen that lean summer. And according to Tauber, he’d picked Florescu’s last smash, Light Falling, to watch on the private jet on the way