One cannot destroy the world without destroying oneself. David Jarvis was a smart guy. He knew he would bring himself down in the process of toppling Pronoun Studios. He just didn’t care.

“We need your help, Dave,” the media liaison told him across the marble terrace table reserved for people involved in important discussions.

David Jarvis winced. “Let’s keep it ‘Mr. Jarvis’ for the moment. I haven’t decided what our relationship is going to be, Ms. Alto.” The young woman across from him nurtured her brandy glass as if it were an embryonic explosive. Whoever had sculpted her for this position had done a remarkable job. On the outside, she radiated shoulder-padded femininity; on the inside, she purred a blind self-assurance known only to small children and sociopaths. Even her admittedly striking good looks were as much a job-related mutation as any act of nature, and probably more so.

“Make it Gloria. We need your help, Mr. Jarvis. And much as we appreciate you taking the time to meet this evening, I assume what I have to tell you must interest you a little.”

“I’m all ears.”

He did in fact have large ears, a condition that since childhood had led him to avoid saying ridiculous things like “I’m all ears.” Throughout prep school his classmates referred to him as “Jarface.” If anyone did that today, David would jab a fork in the perpetrator’s heart.

Gloria Alto, media liaison by day, clandestine conduit by night, lifted a resume from her open purse and read--Jarvis admitted to himself--with considerable aplomb: “David Jarvis, graduated 1992 from UCLA in Cinematography. Ghosted a screenplay for Peter Sandor the following year. In 1994 served as Assistant Director with Zarnoff Productions on three films, one of which was actually released. Did some independent work until 2000 when Homestead Pictures announced he would screenwrite and direct Hell, which went on to win a Golden Globe nomination, as well as substantial critical acclaim. Has several films in development at the present time.”

She folded the paper and replaced it in her purse. “We want you to accept an offer from Pronoun to direct their next major project.” Gloria Alto smiled everywhere except her mouth.

“There are quite a few things wrong with that statement, Ms. Alto.” David Jarvis smiled, but only with his mouth.

“I doubt you can ruffle me. Take a shot.”

Jarvis hid his grin within the brandy for a moment and considered. This bitch Alto was exactly the reason he had chosen filmmaking as a career. She was the complete emotional mess who could only hold herself together by exploiting whatever deranged benefits her mental illness afforded her. His two ex-wives had tried to be that way, but they weren’t quite as adept, he suspected, as Ms. Alto.

“Start by explaining ‘we.’”

“I could say that it doesn’t concern you, but I won’t insult a man of your conviction. I represent an international media conglomerate with diversified holdings in several unrelated industries, united, you might say, by a grave concern with the current political climate.” She indicated the buildings visible across the hundreds of yards of nighttime. “The people who work in this city, and cities across this country, have an absolute right, Mr. Jarvis, to know what they are up against. And they cannot know what they are up against as long as they are subjugated by the lies and corruption so thoroughly inculcated in the works of Pronoun Studios.”

Jarvis laughed. “Oh, so it’s not enough to remind them that if they find something offensive, they can change the channel, or watch a different film?”

He thought he could hear her purr with the contentment of all omniscient beings as she replied, “We are not children, Mr. Jarvis. You and I know that people will believe what they see and hear as long as what they see and hear is all they see and hear. What we are proposing, quite simply, is to remove one obstacle to the freedom of choice.”

“You have that little speech rehearsed?”

Gloria Alto locked her fingers. Jarvis stared at the tiny knots on her hands, wondering vaguely about the idea that it might be better to lose the battle than to do business with this synthetic type of vermin. Ah, well. “Fine, fine. What are you proposing?”

Alto’s fingers unlocked and joined in the conversation. “Pronoun is going to contact you about directing a whale. Actually, it’s a remake. This will be a grand opportunity for you to bring down those sanctimonious bastards.”

“Are you suggesting, Ms. Alto, that I deliberately direct a film badly?”

Alto’s fingers never hesitated. “Absolutely not! We have no desire to see your career derailed. No, what we want is for you to be--oh, how to say it?--elaborate in your work.”

“Elaborate? Grandiose? Ornate? Over the top?”

Alto beamed. “Exactly! It’s an opportunity for you to make a film that is so great a work of art that no one will be able to deny its beauty, and yet no one will be able to endure watching it.”

“Sort of like Heaven’s Gate?”

Alto’s fingers locked again. “Actually, that’s the film they want you to remake.”

Jarvis drained his glass and ordered two more.

 

 

“Remember one thing, David,” the executive producer cautioned from the safety of the far end of the boardroom conference table. “Jazz killed the movie director.”

Jarvis observed as a silent chuckle seized one face after another on its way to his own, where the false humor crumbled and evaporated. The fourteen others in “The Tower,” as Pronoun execs had come to refer to their conference room, were all Money Men, even the women, none with more than the most fleeting concept of Art as anything but an adjective.

“You understand what I mean, David?”

Jarvis drew out his best look of deranged benevolence. “Of course not.” The chuckling reassembled itself and dominoed its way back to the executive producer.

Incandescent lights, bright to the point of invisibility, reflected a deliberate harshness off the redwood table. If executive producer and senior vice president Jack Volcrum gauged his staff’s attitudes by the flare of their nostrils, this table made the perfect examination tool.

“What I’m saying, David,” Volcrum replied, impervious, “is that there can be no beauty without an homage to technique.”

The Moneyman sitting next to Volcrum tapped a pen on the table, as if such a gesture were the accepted way of asking to interrupt. “What I think Jack means is that people go to the cinema to see a movie and not an opera.” The Moneyman glanced at Volcrum for confirmation of his translation and the executive producer nodded.

“I’ve been accused,” Jarvis conceded, “of being quite excessive. People who watch my movies may not even know what the story is, but they don’t forget the experience. So if you’re worried about profitability, you should be talking to your distributors and marketing department.” Then, shifting his answer from the Moneyman to Volcrum, he summed it up: “You asked me to direct this movie. If you’ve changed your mind--well, we’re scheduled to start shooting tomorrow. If you are prepared to settle the pre-production costs right now, then I’m prepared to have you wipe your ass with my contract and I’ll call my assistants and ask them to please stop banging your wife and go find another job. Jack.”

The Tower took on the tones of a mortuary. Even the air conditioner stopped humming. Jack Volcrum toyed with a paper clip, sighed skyward, and lowered his tired eyes until they settled directly across from Jarvis’ own. “I think when this is over, David, I’m going to have you thrown off the roof of this building while young children applaud. This movie is business. And that’ll be another kind of business. I hope you see what I’m saying.”

Jarvis stood to leave. “As if you were speaking in cartoon balloons.”

 

As David Jarvis sat in the chair signified by his own last name, he tugged at a curly lock of beard, imagining the shot in its final formulation, while simultaneously studying the bass patterns on the CDs that blared across the set, and also simultaneously contemplating why it was exactly that Gloria Alto wanted Pronoun Studios destroyed from within.

The set projected a conflux of New Age imagery with a hint of John Ford style wild west ambiance, all the better to convey the vastness of contemporary sterility. The music--which would play no role in the soundtrack--was a harsh blend of mid-Seventies punk poetics and unsoothing Rostopovich cello orchestration. It was just the kind of cacophony that Jarvis liked to use to disorient his players as they prepared their spontaneity. That kind of complexity reminded him of Gloria Alto. As best Jarvis could figure it, the people she represented did not approve of the “politics” of the studio and wished to use him to destroy its credibility and, as an inevitable extension, its marketability. Pronoun was in fact a fairly left wing operation, begun in the early 1940’s by a consortium of actors and directors, several of whom shortly would join others on a list that made it impossible for them to obtain work elsewhere. In those days, Pronoun handled their own distribution and even owned their own theatres, providing one of the few major outlets for progressive or counter-formulaic cinema. Times change.



Jarvis answered the call that had been beeping in his earphone for the last three minutes. “What is it?”

“Ferocious tits, wouldn’t you say, Mr. Jarvis?”

“Where are you, Gloria?”

“Almost behind you. We had a meeting in the Tower and I thought I’d stop by. You like them?”

The media liaison was apparently referring to the exposed breasts of the female protagonist, some eighteen year old named Natalie Corso who’d wowed over the Moneymen in one way or another, hence landing this plum assignment. The actress presently occupied herself by leaning against the tail of the motorized covered wagon, drinking--illegally, Jarvis surmised--a Long Island, pouting from nipples to chin. Gloria, it had since come to Jarvis’ attention, rather enjoyed the company of eighteen-something actresses, almost or maybe more than she enjoyed Jarvis himself. They’d been sleeping together ever since she had maneuvered the system into releasing his first unreleased film, and since the release of his second, Gloria had not been shy to invite nubile females into their little nest. Jarvis found the whole business more comical than arousing.

“Not tonight,” he said, taking the earphone off and rising to face Gloria. “She’s going to have a headache. What was your meeting?”

Gloria locked a Come-Hither ’Cause I’m Cold look at the young actress. “This really isn’t the place.”

David studied her as she continued to launch lust arrows. “Weakening the infrastructure or just convincing them to over-invest?”

At last she lowered her gaze. “Both,” she said, and David recognized a sound in her voice, that bottomless sound she normally reserved for those rare moments, usually just prior to showering. That dense, hollow sound reminded him of some prehistoric beast, freed from slumber and full of hunger--all in one syllable and sharp as teeth. She’d be bringing that actress home tonight whether the poor thing suffered from a drunken heat stroke or not.

“I understand,” she said, breaking his concentration, “that there’s only three more days of shooting.”

He nodded. “That is, if we can get back to work now?”

Gloria smiled as she flipped open her cell phone and clicked away. “Sandy? Hi. Get me Natalie Corso’s manager on the phone, will you?”

The dense, hollow sound had vanished. Jarvis mopped a handkerchief across the back of his neck.

 

 

“I like jazz,” Jarvis mused to himself as he slid into his midnight blue Audi convertible, the least pretentious sports car he’d ever owned. “I like it more than I like Jack Volcrum.” He did in fact like jazz and typically would have blared some Coltrane or Mingus, but tonight curiosity weighed heavier than familiarity. The hour drive to the apartment where he was due to linger with Gloria and guest would be filled with the furtively obtained recording of Gloria’s meeting with Jack Volcrum, the two people on the planet Jarvis trusted least.

Jarvis recognized the monotoned boredom of Volcrum’s voice instantly. The more unhappy the executive producer became, the less animation his voice conveyed. Such affectations, the director had observed, were the bullshit that glued this town together.

“I don’t believe he has our studio’s bests interests at heart. He’s sabotaging us. I want you to do whatever magic you do with the press. It’s the only way we can salvage the project. And I don’t want any of his remarks to hit national.”

“He’s irresponsible. Irrepressible.” Gloria might have been trying to erect an accessible balance, but that really wouldn’t have been her style.

“That’s your headache.”

“I can handle the situ--”

“You haven’t handled it at all. I want contingency plans in place right now. If the pre-release press reports focus on anything remotely negative, I want Jarvis murdered in the media. Distance him from the studio, make it obvious we’re the bad guys, and generate sympathy for the poor, abandoned creative genius. If the reports are neutral or positive, then you misquote him everywhere to the effect that he claims this is the most mainstream, accessible masterpiece anyone’s ever made and that we stand behind a man of his caliber.”

“He won’t be able to back away from that type of praise.”

“Right. What’s he going to say, that he never said the movie was great?”

“Okay.”

Staring out at the line of cars in front of him, Jarvis wondered how much easier it would be for Pronoun to simply concentrate on supporting good movies than to engage in such convoluted crap.

The rest of the recording concerned itself with tangential projects that had no bearing on Jarvis’ film. The director was considering switching to NPR when he heard that dense, hollow sound in Gloria’s voice. He swerved across the lane and jerked the Audi back in line. “Let’s pull a Polanski,” Gloria said.

“I’m intrigued,” Volcrum responded, sounding anything but.

“Jarvis and I are having a sexual relationship and--”

“I know.”

The Audi swerved again. Jarvis could almost feel Gloria Alto swerving as the executive producer’s off the cuff remark ricocheted across the room.

At last she continued. “I see. In any case, I’ve been working on a scenario that could build a great deal of excitement around his proclivities. Depending, you understand, on how far you want me to push it. But if you remember when Roman Polanski was accused of statutory rape with that thirteen year old, his movie, Tess, shuttled way up there. Especially since he had to leave the country.”

“If you’re talking about--”

“No, no. Not that. But a little tar titillates.”

Goddamn that sound in her voice. Goddamn her, period.

“All right, Gloria. I have another meeting. Get lost.”

Sound of heels on granite. Door opens, door closes. Fade.

 

 

“Do I look nervous?” the actress asked the director across the particle board table.

“I was just making conversation, Natalie,” the director demurred. “You look--very nice.”

“The only one of your movies I’d seen before was Hell,” she gushed without intent. “But who hasn’t? Even then, I knew someday I’d star in one of your motion pictures. I mean, that movie was scary, sure. But it had that kind of depth they teach you to look for in acting class. So many oppor--I’m sorry, you probably hate hearing all this.”

Gloria broke the awkward moment by striking it with another. “There is nothing sexier than watching a woman do a line of coke. Here, Natalie, try some. It’s the best you’ll ever do.” So saying, the media liaison leaned back across the actress’ lap, sprinkled fine white powder across her own neck and handed Natalie a short gold straw. Jarvis admitted to himself that the move did have a strong sexual component, through he was damned if he knew why. “We can’t let Mr. Jarvis try this. It’ll effect him in a diminishing way.” Natalie smiled down as Gloria smiled up.

“I hear you,” the actress nodded. “After all, they don’t call it blow for nothing.” She then proceeded to do the first of several lines.

Within a few minutes and after some slammed martinis, Natalie Corso lit up the room. Gloria Alto glowed a bit herself, although her buzz light shown a trifle less bright, due, no doubt, from imbibing with more caution.

“I’ve been coming to Hollywood parties since I was fifteen. But I’ve never partied with anyone of your stature, David. Man, it is hot in here. Are there any more martinis? Gloria, you look so lovely. Are you two having a good time, too?”

“Very good,” Gloria reassured as she touched her nails onto the back of Natalie’s hand. “We were hoping you might want to get wild and intimate a bit later.”

“Maybe sooner,” the actress laughed. “Absolutely! Let me get naked!”

Gloria folded her hand onto the girl’s neck. “Let me get you naked. In our bedroom. Give us five minutes, Mr. Jarvis. Then you come join us.”

“That’s right, Mr. Jarvis,” Natalie giggled. “Don’t you forget about us.”

They made it difficult to resist, that was for sure. But something extremely bad was going to happen tonight, he knew it for certain. There was no question this Natalie person was of legal age and unless she got pregnant or overdosed, he couldn’t see where the real risk lay. Hell, this kind of thing happened all the times nowadays. In fact, it had been happening to him a lot over the past month or so. Maybe Alto had just been leading Volcrum on. God knew she rarely if ever spoke the direct truth. And besides: what could she do to him without implicating herself? He did enjoy the ménage thing. Gloria had such skill at bringing the wild side out of other women. It would be great fun. But…

“Mr. Jarvis,” the two female voices cooed from the other side of the bedroom door. “We’re waiting.”

He walked to the door, sighed, adjusted himself, and opened the door.

Two seconds later he fell to the floor, dead from a gunshot wound to the brain.

 

 

The next day, Natalie Corso faced a sea of microphones that had been placed due to the shrewd workings of Gloria Alto. The police lieutenant in charge of public relations in high profile murder cases spoke next.

“After a thorough and complete investigation, the Los Angeles Police Department has concluded that Ms. Natalie Corso did in fact act in self defense when she mortally wounded Mr. David Jarvis. Mr. Jarvis supplied the young woman with a quantity of alcohol and cocaine immediately prior to announcing that he was going to rape and kill her. This information was confirmed by an eyewitness to the attack. We will not, at this time, release the name of that witness. We are not taking questions at this time.”

Heaven’s Gate II broke all box office records that year. Three weeks after the film’s release, Gloria Alto accepted an offer from Jack Volcrum of Pronoun to become vice president in charge of production.