SATURDAY MORNING BEGINS the way Friday afternoon ended, by the poolside. Only now it’s by the poolside of Cromwell’s house in Coldwater Canyon, where I’ve arrived a little too early for our working breakfast and am, as I sit there, a little too eager to get going.
I sit at a wrought-iron table with a glass top, in a wrought-iron chair with a thick, soft seat cushion. Cromwell’s housekeeper, another Maria, is bringing out the breakfast. English muffins. Canadian bacon. A big pitcher of freshly squeezed orange juice. A basket of pastries and coffee in a large ceramic pot. I sit and smoke and wait. Through the glass tabletop I can see the light-blue Spanish tiles on which the wrought-iron table rests.
A handyman is repainting the tall wrought-iron fence that surrounds Cromwell’s property. I can see that the paint he is using is black, but it smells yellow to me, and when I look away from the fence and the handyman, it’s a manila-envelope-yellow fence I see in my mind.
There is a hint of a breeze, just enough to carry the scent of paint fumes from the fence toward the poolside table where I sit.
Cromwell appears. He is clean-shaven and fully dressed for work, so that when he is finished with me, he can get into his car and drive to his next appointment without having to go back inside the house.
Everything about him says that he has a busy day ahead and that there is a definite limit on the time he has for me. Knowing that I know the score, he is free to create the impression that he has nothing but time for me.
He greets me graciously, unhurriedly, as if we had made no appointment to meet here at this time, as if I were an old friend who dropped in uninvited and unexpected but a friend he is thrilled to see.
“How nice of you to come,” he tells me.
“Look at you,” he tells me, “you’re all tanned. You look wonderful, Doc. You really do. I’ve never seen you look so good.”
“I feel good,” I tell him.
He sits down. Having stood up to greet him, I sit down again myself.
We drink coffee and orange juice and eat English muffins. We talk about Europe. He gives me credit for knowing everything he tells me, but he tells it to me anyway, as if seeking corroboration for his impressions from a post–cold war expert of Eastern Europe like myself.
He tells me about the Russians, the Czechs, the Slovaks, the Poles, the Hungarians, the Bulgarians, the post-Ceausescu Romanians. (He pronounces it perfectly: chow-SHESS-koo.)
He tells me about the cities of Eastern Europe, about Budapest and Prague and Moscow and Leningrad and Sofia and Bucharest and Warsaw. The museums in the cities. And how, despite all the economic and social turnmoil in those countries, there are still some wonderful hotels where one can stay.
“It’s mind-boggling,” he tells me, “the changes that are happening throughout Eastern Europe. Monumental. Absolutely monumental. I was just on the phone with a playwright I’d met in Prague and I was telling him …
“It’s heartbreaking,” he tells me, “the way they have to live in this period of transition from the old to the new without so much as a pause to catch their breaths. The poverty. The anxiety. The suffering, both physical and mental …
“And yet,” he tells me, “it was exhilarating. The humanity, the unadorned and undisguised humanity of the people I saw was worth the trip. It makes you think, to see people like that. It makes you wonder that perhaps for all their suffering …”
It’s always a shock to see Cromwell again, even after a relatively short separation. Although I know him well, and although his physical appearance is tattooed on my brain, the confrontation with his forehead, that damlike structure holding back millions of gallons of thoughts, is not something for which I can ever prepare myself ahead of time.
Nor can I prepare myself ahead of time for the way he looks at me as he is looking at me now. He is pleased to see me. Pleased for reasons I can imagine, but pleased also for reasons beyond my comprehension. He doesn’t just look at me. He sees me. I feel seen when he looks at me.
I might have doubts as to my identity, but he has none. He knows who I am. He alone knows.
There was in Greek mythology a being called a daimon, an attendant spirit that stood behind us, our true self that we could never see. Only others could see it. This attendant spirit seems to materialize whenever I’m with Cromwell. He alone sees it.
He does this to others, not just to me. You are seduced into being what he sees in you. I can easily imagine Jay Cromwell, for the few days he was in each of those countries of Eastern Europe, leaving a lasting impression among its peoples that he alone knew what it was to be a Hungarian, a Pole, a Russian, a Romanian. When he circumscribes a man, a country, or a continent, he does it with such certainty that there is no room for doubt. There is not a trace of doubt in Cromwell’s whole being. He is made, or seems to be made, of some new man-made material called certainty. One hundred percent certainty.
A young woman comes out of the house in a black Lycra bathing suit. Her thick blond hair is combed back into a single, thick braid reaching down to the small of her back. I see a face (with melting blue eyes) that is so beautiful, I know instantly that this is the most beautiful human being, male or female, the most beautiful living thing, I have ever seen and am likely ever to see.
She is heading toward the pool on a diagonal line designed to pass the table where we sit. Cromwell calls her.
“Vera.” He gestures for her to approach.
She does.
Her beauty is so outrageous that I don’t know where to look, so I reach for a cigarette and light it to avoid looking at her. Extremes of this kind, be it beauty or ugliness, make me feel ashamed of something. But when she stops in front of us, I have to look up at her.
She is so young. Totally different from the Cambodian girl whom she has replaced as Cromwell’s concubine.
“Vera, this is Saul. Saul, Vera,” Cromwell introduces us.
I half stand, she half bows.
“How do you do,” she says in that slightly startled way of Slavic immigrants, finding four words to stress in a three-word sentence.
“Vera is from Leningrad,” Cromwell tells me.
“Vera, I am told,” he tells me, “means ‘faith’ in Russian.”
I look at him while he speaks, and when Vera leaves, to continue her interrupted journey to the swimming pool, I continue looking at him watch her walking away.
“How I managed to get her out of the country on such short notice is a story in itself,” he tells me.
“Her parents,” he tells me, “are intellectuals.
“You should have seen the scene at the airport,” he tells me. “Intellectuals or not, Russian parents are first and foremost true parents, if you know what I mean. Real Old World parents. Close. All those families over there that I met were real close.” He makes a fist to demonstrate just how close. “Her mother was crying, her father was crying, Vera was crying. But it wasn’t until she had to say goodbye to her baby brother Sasha that she really started crying. It was very moving. It really was. The show of emotion. The humanity. It was worth the trip itself.
“She’s still a child herself,” he tells me.
“Her parents understood,” he tells me, “that a girl as beautiful as Vera would be wasted over there. No opportunities.
“I met her at the Hermitage,” he tells me.
He waves to Vera and gestures with his chin that I too should look. I turn around and look. Vera waves from the diving board and then performs an unspectacular but efficient swan dive into the pool. She is not a very good swimmer. She keeps her head too high out of the water and she’s all arms and no kick.
Cromwell and I eat Canadian bacon and socialize while Vera swims some mandatory number of laps she has set for herself. Back and forth she goes while we talk. We talk about the weather. How hot it was yesterday.
“Hottest day of the year so far,” one of us says.
“Not so bad today,” the other says.
We talk about the drought, global warming, crime, homelessness, the growing anarchy of everyday life everywhere.
It grates on me again that a man as corrupt and evil as Cromwell does not indulge at least in that ostentatious bad taste of other corrupt Hollywood producers I have known. Not in his office and not here at his home. I want his swimming pool (where Vera swims her laps) to be shaped like a huge letter C or be heart-shaped or amoeba-shaped. Instead, his pool is simple and rectangular, the proportions soothing and pleasing to the eye. His outdoor telephone is neither cellular nor pink, as I would want it to be. It’s black, with a cord. He has no tennis court. He doesn’t even play tennis. He doesn’t even have one of those tans. I am the one who has one of those tans.
A few minutes later, Cromwell segues from socializing to the business at hand, but he does it so casually, in such an offhand manner, that the business of the film I have come there to discuss is made to seem no more than a by-product of my visit to an old friend’s house.
Seeing as how you’re here, he seems to be telling me, and seeing as how I value your opinion so much, Doc, there’s a little something I’d like to discuss with you, but only if you have the time.
And so we begin.
Something disquieting is revealed as we talk about the Old Man’s movie. I realize that in Cromwell’s opinion, the film really is a mess, in desperate need of massive recutting and reshaping. He is not aware that the film is a masterpiece. He is not, therefore, sitting there by the poolside advocating the undoing of a work of art. I am the one who is doing that, because I am the one, not Cromwell, who is aware of the beauty and the brilliance of this work.
And so I can’t help but wonder (as we continue our discussion) that if Cromwell is evil, as I know that he is, if he is the most evil man I know, as I know him to be, what, then, does that make me?
His memory of the film, despite his trip and his recent return, and his memory of all the deleted scenes, is as fresh and precise as if he had seen it early this morning, prior to my arrival. He remembers every single shot. He just doesn’t know what to make of it all.
“I don’t get it,” he tells me. “Maybe the fault is mine. Maybe I’m the one who’s obtuse and the film is wonderful. I really don’t know. What do you think, Doc?”
He leans back in his wrought-iron chair and, with a gesture of his hand, indicates that the stage is mine.
I light a cigarette before I begin. My agenda is simple. It is to gut the work I love and to put back into the film as many, if not all, of Leila’s deleted scenes. To find a coherent new structure that accommodates this desecration.
I need a lot of enthusiasm and energy if I want to be able to sell Cromwell on the merits of my case. It’s not enough to be a slut. I need to be a Salome. And so I begin my song and dance.
“I see the movie,” I tell him, “as a warm-hearted comedy. A romp.
“I see the movie,” I tell him, “as a story of a lovable waitress. A coffee-shop cupid of sorts, who wears her heart on her sleeve and believes in Mom, God, America, and apple pie, but who most of all believes in love.
“It’s a throwback,” I tell him, “to the movies of old. It’s an old-fashioned movie for the new times.
“The heart and soul of the movie,” I tell him, “are all those scenes of the waitress that the Old Man cut out. Why he did that I don’t know, but I do know that without them there is no movie. Those scenes should not only be reinstated but reinforced. Without the waitress, the film not only lacks focus, but what’s even more damaging, it lacks humanity, if you know what I mean.”
Cromwell, fresh from his trip to Eastern Europe, nods as if he knows exactly what I mean by the word “humanity.” The two of us are experts on the subject.
“The movie as is,” I tell him, “is too relentless. Too much of a piece. Too mercilessly wedded to some dissection of life instead of its celebration …
“The movie,” I tell him, “should be a celebration.
“It should ramble a little,” I tell him.
“It should be Capra-esque,” I tell him.
My enthusiasm, or whoever’s enthusiasm it is I’m doing, is becoming infectious. Cromwell nods and smiles. He is as amused as a king watching his favorite court jester.
“The music,” I tell him, “the whole score for the movie should be classical music. Beethoven’s Leonore Overture No. 3 would be perfect for the opening credits.”
I hum a little of the overture, just to create the atmosphere.
“The ‘Blue Danube’ waltz,” I tell him, “would be wonderfully over the top for that scene where all those working-class men are getting into their cars in the parking lot at the end of the day and driving home.
“The ‘Waltz of the Working Man,’” I call it.
“The ‘Waltz of Husbands returning to their Wives and Kids,’” I tell him.
I hum a little of the waltz and sway in my chair. Cromwell does not sway in his but he seems to like the way I sway in mine.
He nods. He smiles. He raises his eyebrows. He throws back his head and laughs, revealing all his teeth.
Stravinsky’s Firbird Suite. A theme from Copeland’s Appalachian Spring. Wagner. Mozart. Bach. I blab on, humming snatches of musical themes and describing the scenes to be underscored by them.
I provide a theoretical framework for my decision to go with an all-classical music score.
Using familiar and recognizable pieces of classical music to underline the everyday, mundane moments in our movie would (I tell him) send a clear message to the audience that we were gently poking fun at our characters, while at the same time saluting them. It’s a send-up, I tell him, a spoof of sorts, but a lovable spoof.
“The use of classical music,” I tell him, “would help sway the film critics and give them an excuse to like the movie, and a little movie like this, in my opinion, can only benefit by quality reviews. The thing we must do is to take the art out of the movie and yet have it be reviewed as an art film, but an art film accessible to everyone.
“And the thing is,” I tell him, “our choice of classical music fits because our movie is really a movie about a waitress in a small town with a yearning for a classical love story. Her romantic yearnings are over the top, just like the music we’re using.
“The love story that’s there now,” I tell him, “would have to be trimmed back a lot and recut, so as to appear as something she invents for the couple involved. She thrills over their love affair. She is really a female version of Walter Mitty, but far more generous at heart, because she is generous enough to imagine these wonderful romantic moments for others. Not for herself, not just for herself, but for others as well.
“The grim love story that’s there now,” I tell him, “once it’s trimmed back, way back, once it’s underscored with music that sends up the whole love affair, and once we understand that we’re seeing it all through the eyes of our waitress, will play like pure comedy. But it will always be tastefully funny, that’s the thing. It’s Americana. Pure Americana. It will make love look like the great American pastime.”
Cromwell shoots his index finger at me.
“That would be a wonderful copy line for the movie. Love, the great American pastime. Or maybe the other way around. The great American pastime, love. What do you think, Doc?”
“I think,” I tell him, “the first one’s better.”
“So do I,” he tells me.
We’re the souls of generosity. We argue over who deserves the credit for the copy line for our movie. He insists on giving me the credit for it. They were my words. I beg to differ. They might have been my words, I tell him, but the credit belongs to him for spotting their appropriateness instantly.
And so I move on to the ending of the movie. I chastise Mr. Houseman, but with reverence for his past accomplishments, for cutting Leila’s character from the last scene.
“We have a chance here, not just for a good old-fashioned upbeat ending, but for a truly satisfying ending on a variety of levels. It’s a Fourth of July. All the characters from the movie are there in the park awaiting the fireworks. We see it through our waitress’s eyes, just as we have seen the whole movie through her eyes. And we see through her eyes that all are back with their families, where they belong. The family unit, the basic building block of humanity”—I actually say this—“has been tested and strained, but it holds. The collective unit, the town, the community, holds as well. And they’ve all come together to celebrate the continuation of an even larger unit, the country, America, and the idea behind it. And then we have the fireworks. They light up the sky over our little town. In my opinion, the Old Man didn’t have enough fireworks at the end. What I think we should do, because I think we’ve earned the right to do it, is get as much stock footage of the greatest fireworks displays available and insert them into the ending, as our waitress’s final POV. There must be great stuff available that we can get. The Bicentennial stuff on TV was great. We use only the best of the best. Our little town goes cosmic at the end. The screen literally explodes with fireworks. Maybe we underscore it with Sousa, maybe not, but I do know that we want to go out big, with a bang, with a thousand bangs.”
I am done. I have finished the movie, but I don’t feel finished myself. New gimmicks occur to me for various portions of the movie and I have a compulsion to share them with Cromwell. Gimmicks, like maggots, are swarming through my mind.
Fortunately, Cromwell glances at his watch. He is heartbroken. So much time has passed so quickly. He has a meeting at the studio he must go to, and the way he says it is designed to tell me that he would give anything if he could get out of it and stay with me. But he can’t. Somebody has to do the boring business part.
He walks me to my car, parked in his drive.
Vera has vanished. She’s not in the pool anymore.
Cromwell tells me how thrilled he is by everything I have told him. We make a midweek appointment to meet at his office to consider, in greater detail, the implementation of my ideas. He mentions hiring a team of editors and putting them at my disposal and under my supervision. That way, working overtime, if need be, we could maybe finish the film in time for its original release schedule.
I know that I’m pressing, and I know that I’m being obvious while I do it, but I pitch Leila to the very end. I tell Cromwell that one of the hidden assets of our film is its potential for making the actress who plays the waitress into a big star. I remind him how invaluable it is for a movie, from a selling point of view, to have a fresh face, a brand-new star in the making in the lead role.
We part.
I cruise down Coldwater Canyon, tapping lightly on my brakes.
The maggots, the unused gimmicks, continue to swarm through my mind, begetting new ones.