The Last Don - Mario Puzo [13]
“On a fair deal,” Molly said, “five percent of gross. Figure they get five more pictures out of it and they are not disasters, total rentals, a billion worldwide, so we’re talking around thirty or forty million.” She paused for a moment and smiled sardonically. “If you were dead, I could get your heirs a much better deal. We’d really have a gun to their heads.”
Vail said, “Call the people at LoddStone. I want a meeting. I’ll convince them that if they don’t cut me in, I’ll kill myself.”
“They won’t believe you,” Molly said.
“Then I’ll do it,” Vail said.
“Talk sense,” Claudia said amiably. “Ernest, you’re only fifty-six years old. That’s too young to die for money. For principle, for the good of your country, for love, sure. But not for money.”
“I have to provide for my wife and kids,” Vail said.
“Your ex-wife,” Molly said. “And for Christ’s sake, you’ve been married twice since.”
“I’m talking about my real wife,” Vail said. “The one who had my kids.”
Molly understood why everybody in Hollywood disliked him. She said, “The Studio won’t give you what you want. They know you won’t kill yourself, and they won’t be bluffed by a writer. If you were a Bankable Star, maybe. An A director, maybe. But never a writer. You’re just shit in this business. Sorry, Claudia.”
Claudia said, “Ernest knows that and I know that. If everybody in this town wasn’t scared to death of a blank piece of paper, they’d get rid of us entirely. But can’t you do something?”
Molly sighed and put in a call to Eli Marrion. She had enough clout to get through to Bobby Bantz, the president of LoddStone.
Claudia and Vail had a drink together afterward in the Polo Lounge. Vail said reflectively, “Big woman, Molly. Big women are easier to seduce. And they’re much nicer in bed than small women. Ever notice?”
Not for the first time Claudia wondered why she was so fond of Vail. Not many people were. But she had loved Vail’s novels, still did. “You’re full of shit,” she said.
Vail said, “I meant big women are sweeter. They bring you breakfast in bed, they do little things for you. Feminine things.”
Claudia shrugged.
Vail said, “Big women are good-hearted. One brought me home from a party one night and really didn’t know what to do with me. She looked around the bedroom exactly like my mother used to look around her kitchen when there was nothing in the house to eat and she was figuring out how to throw a meal together. She was wondering, how the hell we were going to have a good time with the materials at hand.”
They sipped their drinks. As always, Claudia warmed to him when he was so disarming. “You know how Molly and I became friends?” Claudia said. “She was defending some guy who had murdered his girlfriend and she needed some good dialogue for him to use in the courtroom. I wrote the scene just as if it were a movie, and her client got manslaughter. I think I wrote the dialogue and the plotline for three other cases before we stopped.”
“I hate Hollywood,” Vail said.
“You just hate Hollywood because LoddStone Studios screwed you on your book,” Claudia said.
“Not just that,” Vail said. “I’m like one of those old civilizations like the Aztecs, the Chinese empires, the Native American Indians, who were destroyed by a people with more sophisticated technology. I’m a real writer, I write novels to appeal to the mind. That kind of writing is a very backward technology. It can’t stand up against movies. Movies have cameras, they have sets, they have music and they have these great faces. How can a writer conjure that up with just words? And movies have narrowed the field of battle. They don’t have to conquer the brain, only the heart.”
“Fuck you, I’m not a writer,” Claudia said. “A screenwriter is not a writer? You just say that because you’re not good at it.”
Vail patted her on the shoulder. “I’m not putting you down,” he said. “I’m not even putting down film as an art. I’m just defining.”
“It’s a lucky thing I love your books,” Claudia said. “It’s no wonder nobody out here likes you.”
Vail smiled amiably. “No, no,” he said.