Afterward, Charlie looked around at his colleagues. He saw the elation of some and the dismay of others. To his surprise, he found that he felt sick — and not because he’d lost five dollars. No, in the absence of another suspect, it was as if the killings had never taken place.
Later, Charlie would consider the verdict to have caused its own kind of earthquake, ripping through the soul of the city with a palpable seismic force. And for a few days afterward, as jurors made appearances on daytime talk shows, it became clear that this trial had shaken a divided nation. How ironic, Charlie thought, that in eighty-seven days, quite something else would shake and divide the ground beneath their feet.
GREEN MEANS GO
GRACE GONGLEWSKI SPENT EARLY OCTOBER IN THE conference room at Tailspin Pictures, playing host to producers and associate producers and assistant producers and line producers and co-executive producers, production managers and post-production supervisors, explosives experts and special effects designers, directors of photography and camera assistants and assistant camera assistants, location scouts, location coordinators, and George Lucas.
Top brass at Warner Brothers popped in twice a day to say hello and give their full support to the most ambitious project in the studio’s history: A feature film from script to theaters in seventy days. Less than three weeks into pre-production, not including core salaries, two million dollars had been spent on Ear to the Ground, primarily, it seemed, on doughnuts, coffee, and Wolfgang Puck gourmet pizzas.
Five separate first-units would film simultaneously, and a helicopter would shuttle the director and actors among them. Six hundred crew members and six thousand extras would be employed. A tidal wave would be enacted, freeways collapsed, and — at last count — eight high-rises would be swallowed whole. Three thousand walkie-talkies were to be rented, along with three hundred on-road and off-road vehicles. And three million feet of film would be exposed. Editing would begin the minute film was shot. Six months of work would be collapsed into one, at a cost of a hundred million dollars. And rising.
When Grace’s alarm went off at six-fifteen on Friday morning, her eyes and lids had fused, and it took a combination of Visine, saline, and water to separate them. Once upon a time, she had looked forward to Fridays, but the bleary-eyed reality was that she wouldn’t have a day off until the new year.
Casting began today, and Grace hated nothing more than seeing three hundred people deliver the same stupid lines differently, over and over. She hated casting directors, especially the parties they threw, where empty-headed beauties were just waiting to get your card so they could call you at the office. Actors were nightmares, not to be trusted. Their talent was to be whoever you wanted them to be. In that regard, she thought, they were nothing.
There were a hundred pretty actresses gathered outside a soundstage near the Burton Way gate. The cavernous interior had been divided by screens, which didn’t make the place seem any more intimate. Grace was well into her fourth cup of coffee when Ian walked onto the stage.
“Have you seen Henny this morning?” he asked Grace.
She shook her head.
“Have you talked to him?”
“No.”
Ian’s cell phone rang.
“Hello?” he said.
Grace tried not to watch him, but she couldn’t help herself. Ian seemed so fulfilled, like a butterfly that had emerged from a cocoon. She tried to remember how he used to be — pale, unkempt, eyes always looking for an angle to play. Now, he seemed possessed of a preternatural calm that radiated from his face and shoulders in exponentially increasing waves. He wasn’t even rattled when Henny Rarlin stalked onto the stage and told him to get off the phone.
“The pages suck,” Henny bellowed. “You haven’t incorporated one …”
Ian pulled half a dozen sheets of script from an expensive black-leather shoulder bag and handed them to the director. “You must’ve read the old ones,” he announced.
Henny grabbed the pages, pulled a pair of John Lennon glasses from his pocket, and wound them dramatically over his ears. Then he began to read.
When word got around that Henny Rarlin had arrived, at least ten actresses found a reason to draw near. But Henny, ever the leerer, interrupted his reading for only a second before he returned to the script. Turning a page, he smiled; he chuckled. In a gesture symbolizing his deepest concentration, he flung his arm over his head and grasped his opposite ear. A moment later, he smiled broadly to Ian.
“This sucks much less,” Henny said.
At Warner’s, marketing usually met on Mondays, but this Friday, they were having a special session to figure out how they would ever be able to cover costs on Ear to the Ground. What had been publicized, even paraded, as a hundred-million-dollar movie was now their problem. Or, depending on how you looked at it, their challenge.
First, they condemned the costliness of special effects in general; then they discussed whether anybody really believed the Big One was coming. Most of them did. “Nobody’s leaving, I hope,” somebody said, in an attempt at a joke.
This much they knew: The film had to open at least two weeks before December 29. If it was a stinker, and the quake came, they’d probably be rescued. If it was a hit, and the quake came, it’d be a fucking bonanza.
But what if the quake didn’t come? What if it was early, or late? What would happen to the hype? What they needed was a way to link the actual facts about the earthquake with the marketing campaign for Ear to the Ground. That was when Meyer Stern, worldwide president of marketing, had the idea of calling Sterling Caruthers.
THE LOGIC OF NUMBERS
STERLING CARUTHERS HUNG UP THE PHONE AND SAT for a long time without moving any part of his body. This temporary paralysis, caused by a jolting stimulus to his pineal gland, was actually the result of a five-minute conversation that had netted him seven million dollars. Having not yet let go of the cradled receiver, and sitting still as a fly the instant before you take a swat at it, Caruthers realized that his schemes to capitalize on the coming earthquake had been merely the uncreative ideas of a desperate man. He had pushed when he should have relaxed. The Simpson trial had temporarily stolen his limelight. Now, he knew, the opportunities would come.
Caruthers suddenly remembered a “SALE” sign by that chateau on Mulholland; then he recalled a BMW commercial he’d seen on television that morning. Victoria M., the agent he’d met weeks ago at William Morris, was hopeful he could become the premier earthquake spokesman — that is, should the disaster strike. Already, there was money swirling around this quake, and the young agent had been particularly shocked to find how badly she wanted it. Nothing comparable had happened to her since coming to Hollywood, and Caruthers had been impressed at the way she’d adapted herself to the idea of cashing in on future pain and suffering. In the closing chapter of the second millennium, he thought, the smart money was squarely on doom.
The call from Warner Brothers had come out of the blue, but by the end of the week there would be dozens of calls. Perhaps hundreds. Turning down million-dollar offers suddenly seemed the most delightful of pursuits.