The Last Don - Mario Puzo [17]
Bobby Bantz had gathered them all up from the festival going on outside the mansion. The only Talent there was the direc-tor of Messalina, a woman named Dita Tommey, in the A class and known as the best with female stars, which in Hollywood today meant not homosexual but feminist. The fact that she was also a lesbian was irrelevant to all these men in the conference room. Dita Tommey brought in her pic-tures under budget, her pictures made money, and her liaisons with females caused far less trouble on a picture than a male director screwing his actresses did. Lesbian lovers of the famous were docile.
Eli Marrion sat at the head of the conference table and let Bantz lead the discussion.
Bantz said, “Dita, tell us exactly how we stand on the picture and what your thoughts are on solving the situation. Hell, I don’t even understand the problem.”
Tommey was short and very compact and always spoke to the point. She said, “Athena is scared to death. She is not coming back to work unless you geniuses come up with something that can erase that fear. If she doesn’t come back, you guys are out fifty million bucks. The picture cannot be finished without her.” She paused for a moment. “I’ve shot around her in the past week, so I’ve saved you money there.”
“This fucking picture,” Bantz said. “I never wanted to make it.”
This provoked other men in the room; the producer, Skippy Deere, said, “Fuck you, Bobby,” and Melo Stuart, Athena Aquitane’s agent, said, “Bullshit.”
In truth, Messalina had been enthusiastically supported by everyone. It had received one of the easiest “green lights” in history.
Messalina told the story of the Roman Empire under the Emperor Claudius from a feminist point of view. History, written by males, painted the Empress Messalina as a corrupt and murderous harlot, who one night took on the whole population of Rome in sexual debauch. But in the movie creating her life almost two thousand years later, she was revealed as a tragic heroine, an Antigone, another Medea. A woman who, using the only weapons available to her, tried to change a world in which men were so dominant that they treated the female sex, half the human race, as if they were slaves.
It was a great concept—rampant sex acts in full color and a highly relevant and popular theme—but it needed a perfect package to make the whole thing credible. First Claudia De Lena wrote a script that was witty and had a strong story line. Dita Tommey as director was a pragmatic and politically correct choice. She had a dry intelligence and was a proven director. Athena Aquitane was perfect as Messalina and had completely dominated the picture so far. She had the beauty of face and body, and the genius of her acting made everything plausible. More important, she was one of the three female Bankable Stars in the world. Claudia, with her own offbeat genius, had even given her a scene in which Messalina, seduced by the growing Christian legends, saved martyrs from the sure death of the amphitheater. When Tommey read the scene she said to Claudia, “Hey, there’s a limit.”
Claudia grinned at her and said, “Not in the movies.”
Skippy Deere said, “We have to shut down the picture until we get Athena back to work. That will cost a hundred fifty grand a day. The situation is this. We’ve spent fifty million. We’re halfway through, we can’t write Athena out and we can’t double her. So if she doesn’t come back, we scrap the picture.”
“We can’t scrap it,” Bantz said. “Insurance doesn’t cover a star refusing to work. Drop her out of a plane, then insurance pays. Melo, it’s your job to get her back. You’re responsible.”
Melo Stuart said, “I’m her agent but I can only have so much influence on a woman like her. Let me tell you this. She is genuinely frightened. This is not one of your temperamental