The news people laughed. But the scrawny girl refused to be embarrassed.
“You said you were finished with commercial films and you were going to seek inner peace; now you’re back. Why?”
Because inner peace comes at eleven-fifty a week at the Katmandu-Sheraton, baby. “I spent two years absorbing the wisdom of the East in the Himalayas,” Westerly replied aloud. “One of the most important things the lamas taught me is that a man should use his inborn talents and use them wisely. My talent is making movies and television shows. It’s my karma… my destiny.”
“Didn’t you make a movie in Tibet last year?” asked an overweight, mustachioed reporter.
“Surely did,” said Westerly. “But that was purely for self-expression… to help release my soul from its bondage. That film will never be released for commercial viewing.” Not that bomb. Never make that mistake again—hash and high altitudes just don’t mix.
One of the media interviewers, his videotape camera strapped securely to the side of his head, asked, “You left the States right after the Academy Awards dinner, with no explanations at all except that you had to—quote, find yourself, end quote. Why did you turn down the Oscar?”
“Didn’t think I deserved it. A director shouldn’t get an Oscar for his first feature film. There were many other directors who had amassed a substantial body of work who deserved to get an Oscar before Mitch Westerly did.” And the IRS and the Narcs were getting too close; it was no time to show up at a prearranged affair.
“Do you still consider yourself the Boy Genius of Hollywood?”
“Never been a boy.” Pushing forty and running scared.
“Why have you come here to Toronto, instead of going back to Hollywood?”
Taxes, pushers, alimony… take your pick. “Gregory Earnest convinced me that ‘The Starcrossed’ was a vehicle worthy of my Krishna-given talents.”
“Have you met the people who’ll be working for you on ‘The Starcrossed’?”
“Not yet.”
“Have you read any of the scripts?”
I gagged over the first six pages. “Looked over some of the scripts and read the general concept of the show. Looks great.”
“Do you think Shakespeare and science fiction can be mixed?”
“Why not? If Will were alive today, he’d be writing science fiction.”
“What do you think is the best film you’ve ever directed?”
Without an instant’s hesitation, Westerly replied, “The one I’m working on now. In this case, the entire series, ‘The Starcrossed.’”
But in his mind, his life flashed before his consciousness like a videotape spun at dizzying, blurring speed. He knew the best film he had done; everyone in the room knew it; the one original piece of work he had been able to do, the first major job he had tackled, as a senior back at UCLA: The Reawakening. The hours, the weeks, the months he had spent. First as a volunteer worker at the mental hospital, then convincing them to let him bring his tiny pocket camera in. Following Virginia, sallow, pathetic, schizophrenic Virginia through the drug therapy, the primal sessions, the EEGs, the engram reversals. Doctors, skinny fidgety nurses who didn’t trust him at first, Virginia’s parents tight and suspicious, angry at her for the dream world they had thrust her into,’ the psychotechs and their weird machines that mapped the brain and put the mind on a viewscreen. Virginia’s gradual awakening to the real world, her understanding that the parents who said they loved her actually wanted nothing to do with her, her acceptance of adulthood, of maturity, of her own individuality and the fact that she was a lovely, desirable woman. Mitch’s wild hopeless love for her and that heart-stopping instant when she smiled and told him in a voice so low that he could barely hear it that she loved him too. That was his best film; his life and hers recorded in magnetic swirls on long reels of tape. Truth frozen into place so that people could see it and understand and cry and laugh over it.
He had never done anything so fine again. He became successful. He directed “True to Life” TV shows and made money and fame. He married Virginia while they were both still growing and changing. Unlike the magnetic patterns on video tape, they did not stay frozen in place forever. They split, slowly and sadly at first, then with the wild burning anger of betrayal and hate. By the time he directed his first major production and was nominated for an Oscar, his world had already crashed around him.
“Do you really think ‘The Starcrossed’ is award-winning material?”
The question snapped him back to this small stuffy overcrowded room, with the news people playing their part in the eternal charade. So he went back to playing his.
“‘The Starcrossed’ has the potential of an award-winning series. It won’t be eligible for an Oscar because it’s not a one-time production. But it should be in contention for an Emmy as Best Dramatic Series.”
Satisfied that they had put his neck in the noose, the news people murmured their thanks and headed on to their next assignments.
Westerly went straight to the studio, while two of the PR Oaks took his luggage to the hotel. He almost asked why it took a pair of them to escort his one flight bag to the hotel, but thought better of it. If he raised a question about it, Westerly knew, they’d wind up assigning a third PR man to supervise the first two.
Gregory Earnest met him at the studio, looking somber in a dark gray jumpsuit. His face was as deeply hidden by bushy beard and tangled mane as ever, but since Westerly had seen him last—many months earlier, in Nepal— Earnest’s face had subtly changed, improved. His nose seemed slightly different, somehow.
“I’m glad you’re finally here,” Earnest said, with great seriousness. “Now maybe we can start to bring some order out of this chaos.”
He showed Westerly around the sets that had been built in the huge studio. The place was empty and quiet, except for a small group of people off to one side who were working on some kind of aerial rigging. Westerly ignored them and studied the sets.
“This is impossible,” he said at last.
“What?” Earnest’s eyebrows disappeared into his bushy forelocks. “What do you mean?”
“These sets.” Westerly stood in the middle of the starship bridge, surrounded by complicated-looking cardboard consoles. “They’re too deep. How’re we going to move cameras in and out around all this junk? It’ll take hours to make a single shot!”
Earnest sighed with relief. “Oh that. You’ve never directed a three-doe show before, have you?”
“No, but…”
“Well, one of the things audiences like is a lot of depth in each scene. We don’t put all the props against the walls anymore… we scatter them around the floor. Makes a better three-dimensional effect.”
“But the cameras…”
“They’re small enough to move through the standing props. We measured all the tolerances…”
“But I thought three-dee cameras were big awkward mothers.”
Earnest cast a rare smile at him. It was not a pleasant thing to see. “That was two years ago. Time marches on. A lot of transistors have flown under the bridge. You’re not in the Mystic East anymore.”
Westerly pushed his glasses up against the bridge of his nose. “I see,” he said.
“Hey! There you are!” A shout came echoing across the big, nearly empty room.
Earnest and Westerly turned to see a stubby little guy dashing toward them. He wore a Starcrossed tee shirt and a pair of old-fashioned sailor’s bell-bottoms, complete with a thirteen-button trapdoor in front.