Malomar loved to sit in the cutting room with the editors and the director. He loved to sit in the dark and make decisions on what the tiny flickering images should do and not do. Like God, he gave them a certain kind of soul. If they were “good,” he made them physically beautiful by telling the editor to cut an unflattering image so that a nose was not too bony; a mouth not too mean. He could make a heroine’s eyes more doe like with a better lighted shot, her gestures more graceful and touching. He would not send the good down to despair and defeat. He was more merciful.
Meanwhile, he kept a sharp eye on the villains. Did they wear the right color tie and the right cut of jacket to enhance their villainy? Did they smile too trustingly? Were the lines in their faces too decent? He blotted out that image with the cutting machine. Most of all, he refused to let them be boring. The villain had to be interesting. Malomar in his cutting room truly watched every feather that fell from the tail of the sparrow. The world he created must have a sensible logic, and when he finished with that particular world, you usually were glad to have seen it exist
Malomar had created hundreds of these worlds. They lived in his brain forever and ever as the countless galaxies of God must exist in His brain. And Malomar’s feat was as astounding to him. But it was different when he left the darkened cutting room and emerged into the world created by God which made no sense at all.
Malomar had suffered three heart attacks over the past few years. From overwork, the doctor said. But Malomar always felt that God had fucked up in the cutting room. He, Malomar, was the last man who should have a heart attack. Who would oversee all those worlds to be created? And he took such good care of himself. He ate sparingly and correctly. He exercised. He drank little. He fornicated regularly but not to excess. He never drugged. He was still young, handsome; he looked like a hero. And he tried to behave well, or as well as possible in the world God was shooting. In Malomar’s cutting room a character like Malomar would never die from a heart attack. The editor would excise the frame, the producer call for a rewrite of the script. He would command the directors and all the actors to the rescue. Such a man would not be allowed to perish.
But Malomar could not excise the chest pains. And often at night, very late, in his huge house, he popped angina pills in his mouth. And then he would lie in bed petrified with fear. On really bad nights he called his personal physician. The doctor would come and sit with him through the night, examine him, reassure him, hold his hand until dawn broke. The doctor would never refuse him because Malomar had written the script for the doctor’s life. Malomar had given him access to beautiful actresses so that he could become their doctor and sometimes their lover. When Malomar in his early days indulged in more strenuous sex, before his first heart attack, when his huge home was filled with overnight guests of starlets and high-fashion models, the doctor had been his dinner companion and they had sampled together the smorgasbord of women prepared for the evening.
Now on this midnight, Malomar alone in his bed, in his home, phoned the doctor. The doctor came and examined him and assured him the pains would go away. That there was no danger. That he should let himself fall asleep. The doctor brought him water for his angina pills and tranquilizers. And the doctor measured his heart with his stethoscope. It was intact; it was not breaking into pieces as Malomar felt it was. And after a few hours, resting more easily, Malomar told the doctor he could go home. And then Malomar fell asleep.
He dreamed. It was a vivid dream. He was at a railroad station, enclosed. He was buying a ticket. A small but burly man pushed him aside and demanded his ticket. The small man had a huge dwarf’s head and screamed at Malomar. Malomar reassured him. He stepped aside. He let the man buy his ticket. He told the man, “Look, whatever is bothering you is OK with me.” And as he did so, the man grew taller, his features more regular. He was suddenly an older hero, and he said to Malomar, “Give me your name; I’ll do something for you.” He loved Malomar. Malomar could see that. They were both very kind to each other. And the railroad agent selling the tickets now treated the other man with enormous respect.
Malomar came awake in the vast darkness of his huge bedroom. His eye lenses narrowed down, and with no peripheral vision, he fixed on the white rectangular light from the open bathroom door. For just a moment he thought the images on the cutting-room screen had not ended, and then he realized it had only been a dream. At that realization his heart broke away from his body in a fatal arrhythmic gallop. The electrical impulses of his brain snarled together. He sat up, sweating.
His heart went into a final thundering rush, shuddered. He fell back, eyes closing, all light fading on the screen that was his life. The last thing he ever heard was a scraping noise like celluloid breaking against steel, and then he was dead.
Chapter 33
It was my agent, Doran Rudd, who called me with the news of Malomar’s death. He told me there was going to be a big conference on the picture at Tri-Culture Studios the next day. I had to fly out and he would meet my plane.
At Kennedy Airport I called Janelle to tell her I was coming into town, but I got her answering machine with her French-accented machine voice, so I left a message for her.
Malomar’s death shocked me. I had developed an enormous respect for him during the months we had worked together. He never gave out any bullshit, and he had an eagle eye for any bullshit in a script or a piece of film. He tutored me when he showed me films, explaining why a scene didn’t play or what to watch for in an actor who might be showing talent even in a bad role. We argued a lot. He told me that my literary snobbishness was defensive and that I hadn’t studied film carefully enough. He even offered to teach me how to direct a film, but I refused. He wanted to know why.
“Listen,” I said, “just by existing, just by standing still and not bothering anybody, man is a fate-creating agent. That’s what I hate about life. And a movie director is the worst fate-creating agent on earth. Think of all those actors and actresses you make miserable when you turn them down. Look at all the people you have to give orders to. The money you spend, the destinies you control. I just write books, I never hurt anybody, I only help. They can take it or leave it.”
“You’re right,” Malomar said. “You’ll never be a director. But I think you’re full of shit. Nobody can be that passive.” And of course, he was right. I just wanted to control a more private world.
But still I felt saddened by his death. I had some affection for him though we did not really know each other well. And then too I was a little worried about what was going to happen to our movie.
Doran Rudd met me at the plane. He told me that Jeff Wagon would now be the producer and that Tri- Culture had swallowed up Malomar Studios. He told me to expect a lot of trouble. On the way over to the studio he briefed me on the whole Tri-Culture operation. On Moses Wartberg, on his wife, Bella, on Jeff Wagon. Just for openers he told me that though they were not the most powerful studio in Hollywood, they were the most hated, often called “Tri-Vulture Studios.” That Wartberg was a shark and the three VP’s were jackals. I told him that you couldn’t mix up your symbols like that, that if Wartberg was a shark, the others had to be pilot fish. I was kidding around, but my agent wasn’t even listening. He just said, “I wish you were wearing a tie.”
I looked at him. He was in his slick black leather jacket over a turtleneck sweater. He shrugged.
“Moses Wartberg could have been a Semitic Hitler,” Doran said. “But he would have done it a little differently. He would have sent all the adult Christians to the gas chamber and then set up college scholarships for their children.”
Comfortably slouched down in Doran Rudd’s Mercedes 450SL, I barely listened to Doran’s chatter. He was telling me that there was going to be a big fight over the picture. That Jeff Wagon would be producer and Wartberg would be taking a personal interest in it. They had killed Malomar with their harassment, Doran said. I wrote that off as typical Hollywood exaggeration. But the essence of what Doran was telling me was that the fate of the picture would be decided today. So in the long ride to the studio I tried to remember everything I knew or had heard about Moses Wartberg and Jeff Wagon.
Jeff Wagon was the essence of a schlock producer. He was schlock from the top of his craggy head to the tiptoes of his Bally shoes. He had made his mark in TV, then muscled his way into feature films by the same process with which a blob of ink spreads on a linen tablecloth and with the same aesthetic effect. He had made over a
