Hella Nation - Evan Wright [153]
Though Dollard is loud and obnoxious in most matters, when it comes to discussing the dark Hollywood arts he practiced as an agent, he looks over his shoulders, as if expecting a squad of agent hit men to show up in their black suits, armed with bland smiles and Uzis. Leaning forward, he claims that, as much as he embraced every possible excess during his rise to the top, the life appalled him. “There was just so much fucking money and whores and power that people actually got bored with it,” he says. “An agent I worked with—I guess he was bored out of his fucking mind—he trained his fucking Chihuahua to lick his balls and would have people come into his office to watch.”
He continues: “There was another guy I worked with”—Dollard names a prominent manager—“who was such a pathological liar they did a whole intervention, like a 12-step thing on him to get him to stop lying, hired fucking psychiatrists and brought, like, his mother and wife in to confront him in his office.”
What troubles Dollard the most about his past as an agent were the business practices. “A lot of what we did was just your basic nasty, lying, back-stabbing stuff that’s part of the normal business world,” he says. “But some of what we did, it’s like The Firm, like overbilling.” He explains that during the heyday of the speculative-script market, in the nineties, a form of overbilling commonly perpetrated against clients was cutting side deals with producers for secret commissions. He says, “You’re talking about, like, white-collar crime here—virtually—about some of this stuff.”
He adds, “I was taught when I was a kid that you’re supposed to grow up and contribute to society and be a good person. No kid thinks, When I grow up, I want to fuck other people.” He laughs. “I always used to tell myself it’s all going to be worth it because eventually I’m going to make good films.”
THE DELIVERY DUDE
A FEW DAYS LATER Dollard phones with good news. One of the Marines from Young Americans is visiting him. Sergeant Brandon Welsh greets me at the door of Dollard’s apartment. Dressed in jeans and a knit surf shirt, Welsh is compactly built and fair-haired, with a gravity to him that seems at odds with his boyish smile.
Dollard saunters in, looking unusually relaxed. His apartment has been transformed. There’s an Oriental rug, velvet couches, African art on the walls and a six-foot-tall Buddha statue by the entry—all purchased out of hock with his recent cash windfall. Dollard drops onto a velvet chaise.
“Doesn’t he look good?” Welsh asks. He obviously cares a great deal for Dollard. Welsh is also an ardent supporter of Dollard’s film on the grounds that “he’s the only one in the media telling my story.”
For Welsh the war is a deeply personal matter. Friends of his died in Iraq. Welsh nearly died. And he believes the fatal patrols undertaken by his unit helped stabilize the area and will in the long run improve the lives of Iraqis. Still, terrible things, which trouble him today, did happen. He tells me of one instance when his unit came under fire and, in the confusion that followed, Marines may have ended up killing innocent civilians. Welsh shakes his head. “It was so fucked up.”
“Welsh, you’re a killer, and that’s a good thing,” Dollard says, walking up behind him and gesturing toward him like he is an exhibit in a science project. “Earlier today Welsh was having anxiety about killing and I had to tell him, ‘Look, dude, appropriate killing is one of the most sacred and noble and greatest things to go on in the world. The world cannot survive without killing. Good killing is required to hold society together and to protect it. This involves nobility and sacrifice. It’s about subsuming the self to the whole.’ Welsh volunteered to kill on behalf of our society. That is a good, noble thing.”
I point out that Welsh’s anxiety was about killing innocent