Another Life_ A Memoir of Other People - Michael Korda [206]
Bluhdorn’s country home was vast, rambling, and handsomely landscaped, but its most notable feature was a parking lot big enough for a good-size motel. Bluhdorn’s car and driver, Forman’s car and driver, and the car and driver that had been provided for me were drawn up in it as I was conducted to the pool house, where Forman, casually dressed, and Bluhdorn, in the kind of matching short-sleeved pool shirt and shorts that men used to wear poolside in Miami Beach hotels in the 1950s, were sitting under an awning, lighting up cigars.
The pool itself was huge, glamorous, and empty. As I sat down, I remarked politely on what a nice pool it was.
Bluhdorn seemed startled. “Pool? What goddamn pool?” he asked. “We’re not here to swim, goddamn it,” he barked. “We’re here to talk about the goddamn Fifth Horseman.”
Having put me in my place, Bluhdorn gave Forman, who had probably heard it a dozen times before, his set piece on the dangers facing New York and the need to wake the country up—the whole goddamn world, in fact. Forman nodded at appropriate moments, his eyes half closed. He did not attempt to interrupt Bluhdorn, not so much out of deference but because Bluhdorn never seemed to pause for breath. Bluhdorn was the only man I had ever met who could talk while he was inhaling. Occasionally he stuffed his cigar in his mouth, but that didn’t slow him down either.
Eventually, he finished, lit another cigar, and asked Forman to comment. Wearily, Forman proceeded to explain the many difficulties of turning The Fifth Horseman into a movie. He shared Bluhdorn’s enthusiasm, of course, he said, with an expression so devoid of enthusiasm as to appear almost blank, but the ending was weak, a real letdown. The cop who is the good guy finds the bomb at the last moment and defuses it. It’s predictable, Forman said.
Bluhdorn nodded. This was apparently not the first time he’d heard this criticism of his baby. He pointed his cigar at me, “What do you say to that?” he asked, as if the ending were my fault.
I shrugged. “The ending works in the book,” I said. “Maybe for the movie you could do something different. After all, in all these books, like Black Sunday and so on, the terrorists’ bomb always gets defused at the last moment. Maybe in the movie you should make the audience believe that’s what’s going to happen, then, at the very last second, you simply show an atomic bomb going off in New York City. The cop has failed. If that doesn’t shock the audience, I don’t know what will.”
There was a long silence. “You mean, we fry eight million New Yorkers on screen?” Bluhdorn asked.
“Not all of them,” I said cheerfully. “People in Queens, the Bronx, and Staten Island would probably survive. But that’s not the point. Make the ending tough. Have the bomb go off.”
There was a longer silence. Then Bluhdorn leaned over, rumpled my hair, and pinched my cheek affectionately. “No,” he said, “that’s a terrible idea. But at least you’re trying. I want you to make this your number-one priority from now on.”
It was nearly dark by the time we had finished and Forman and I were dismissed. I accompanied Forman back to his car. Did he really think the ending was the problem? I asked. “No,” he said. “Forget the ending. Who cares? The movie is never going to get made.”
“My father used to say half of making movies is wasting time.”
He rolled his eyes. “He was a wise man. And an optimist.”
Waste of time or not, Bluhdorn didn’t give up. The next time I heard from him was by way of a telephone call from one of his secretaries. Bluhdorn wanted me to join him for dinner at the Saint-Tropez tomorrow night to talk about the movie.
I said I’d