The Last Don - Mario Puzo [160]
Skippy Deere was grinning at him. “Sure,” he said. “Our director is Lorenzo Tallufo. He insists his people travel first class. The bit players and cameo roles were written into the script because they were screwing the vehicle stars. The yacht is booked for two weeks because Lorenzo wants to visit the Cannes Film Festival.”
“You’re the producer, talk to Lorenzo,” Bantz said.
“Not me,” Deere told him. “Lorenzo has four one-hundred-million-dollar-grossing pictures, he has two Academy Awards. I’ll kiss his ass when I help him onto the yacht. You talk to him.”
There was no answer to this. Technically, in the hierarchy of the industry, the head of the Studio outranked everybody. The producer was the person who got all the elements together and oversaw the budget and script development. But the reality was that once the picture started shooting, the director was the supreme power. Especially if he had a record of successful movies.
Bantz shook his head. “I can’t talk to Lorenzo, not when I don’t have Eli to back me up. Lorenzo would tell me to go fuck myself and we’d lose the picture.”
“And he’d be right,” Deere said. “What the hell, Lorenzo always steals five million off a picture. They all do it. Now calm down so we can show ourselves at the funeral.”
But Bantz was now looking at another cost sheet. “On your picture,” he said to Deere, “there’s a charge of five hundred thousand dollars for Chinese take-out food. Nobody, nobody, not even my wife can spend a half million dollars on Chinese food. French food maybe. But Chinese? Chinese take-out?”
Skippy Deere had to think fast, Bobby had him there. “It’s a Japanese restaurant, the food is sushi. That’s the most expensive food in the world.”
Bantz was suddenly calm. People were always complaining about sushi. The head of a rival studio had told him about taking a Japanese investor to dinner at a restaurant that specialized in sushi. “A thousand bucks for two people for twenty fucking fish heads,” he had said. Bantz was impressed.
“OK,” Bantz said to Skippy Deere, “but you have to cut down. Try to get more college interns on your next picture.” Interns worked for free.
The Hollywood funeral of Eli Marrion was more newsworthy than even that of a Bankable Star. He had been revered by studio heads, producers, and agents, he had even been respected and sometimes loved by Bankable Stars, directors, and even screenplay writers. What had inspired this was his civility and an overpowering intelligence that had solved many problems in the movie business. He also had had the reputation of being fair, within reason.
In his later years, he was an ascetic, did not wallow in power, did not command sexual favors from starlets. Also, LoddStone had made more great movies than any other studio, and there was nothing more precious to people who actually made movies.
The president of the United States sent his chief of staff to give a brief eulogy. France sent its minister of culture, though he was an enemy of Hollywood movies. The Vatican sent a papal envoy, a young cardinal, handsome enough to receive offers for cameo roles. A Japanese group of business executives magically appeared. The highest executives of movie corporations from the Netherlands, Germany, Italy, and Sweden did Eli Marrion honor.
The eulogies began. First a male Bankable Star, then a female Bankable Star, then an A director; even a writer, Benny Sly, gave Marrion tribute. Then the president’s chief of staff. Then, just so the show would not be judged pretentious, two of the movie’s greatest comics made jokes about Eli Marrion’s power and business acumen. Finally, Eli’s son, Kevin, and his daughter, Dora, and Bobby Bantz.
Kevin Marrion extolled