Beautiful Ruins (80)

“Michael. Tell me. What do you know about Cleopatra?”



Stupid question. Every last person in town knew every last thing about that film. Mostly how it was eating Fox alive. How the idea had kicked around for twenty years before Walter Wanger developed it in ’58. But then Wanger caught his wife blowing her agent and he shot the agent in the balls. So Rouben Mamoulian took over Cleo. Budgeted the thing for $2 million with Joan Collins. Who made as much sense as Don Knotts. So the studio dumped her and went after Liz Taylor. The biggest star in the world but she was reeling from bad publicity after she stole Eddie Fisher from Debbie Reynolds. Not even thirty and already on her fourth marriage. At this precarious stage of her career and what’s she do? Demands a million bucks and 10 percent of Cleopatra. No one had ever made half-a-mil on a picture and this dame wants a mil?



But the studio was desperate. Skouros said yes.



Mamoulian took forty people to England to start production on Cleo in 1960. It was hell right off. Bad weather. Bad luck. Sets built. Sets torn down. Sets rebuilt. Mamoulian couldn’t shoot a single frame. Liz got sick. A cold became an abscessed tooth became a brain infection became a staph infection became pneumonia. Woman had a tracheotomy and nearly died on the table. Cast and crew sat around drinking and playing cribbage. After sixteen months of production and seven million bucks he had less than six feet of usable film. A year and a half and the man hadn’t even shot his height in film. Skouros had no choice. He fired Mamoulian. Brought in Joe Mankiewicz. Mankie moved the whole thing to Italy and dumped the whole cast except Liz. Brought in Dick Burton to be Marc Antony. Hired fifty screenwriters to fix the script. Soon it was five hundred pages. Nine hours of story. The studio was losing seventy grand a day while a thousand extras sat around getting paid for nothing and it rained and rained and people walked off with cameras and Liz drank and Mankie started talking about making it into three pictures. The studio was in so deep by now there was no turning back. Not after two years of production and twenty million already down the shitter and God knows how much more while poor tight Skouros rode that goddamn thing all the way down hoping against hope that what showed up on-screen was the greatest goddamned movie . . . spectacle . . . ever . . . made.



“What do I know about Cleopatra?” I looked up at Skouros perched on his desk holding the rest of my cola. “Guess I know a little.”



Right answer. Skouros poured some more Coke in my glass. Then he reached over to his desk. Grabbed a manila envelope. Handed it to me. I will never forget the photo I pulled out of that envelope. It was a work of art. Two people in tight clench. And not any two people. Dick Burton and Liz Taylor. Not Antony and Cleopatra in a publicity shot. Liz and Dick lip-locked on a patio at the Grand Hotel in Rome. Tongues spelunking each other’s mouths.



This was disaster. They were both married. The studio was still dealing with the shit publicity from Liz breaking up the marriage of Debbie and Eddie. Now Liz is getting beefed by the greatest stage actor of his generation? And a top-notch cocksman to boot? What about Eddie Fisher’s little kids? And Burton’s family? His poor Welsh rotters with their coal-stained eyes crying about their lost daddy? The pub would kill the movie. Kill the studio. The movie’s budget was already a guillotine hanging over Skouros’s fat Greek head. This would drop the blade.



I stared at the photo.



Skouros did his best to smile and look calm. But his eyes blinked like a metronome. “What do you think, Deane?”



What did Deane think? Not so fast.



There was something else I knew. But I didn’t really know yet. See? The way you know about sex before you really know about it? I had a gift. But I hadn’t figured how to use it. Sometimes I could see through people. Right to their cores. Like an X-ray. Not a human lie detector. A desire detector. It’s what got me in trouble too. A girl tells me no. Why? She’s got a boyfriend. I hear no but I SEE yes. Ten minutes later the boyfriend walks in to find his girlfriend with a mouthful of Deane. See?



It was like that with Skouros. He was saying one thing but I was seeing something else. So. What now, Deane? Your whole career’s in front of you. And Dooley’s advice is still playing in your head. (Don’t look him in the eye. Don’t use profanity. Don’t challenge him.)



He says it again. “So. What do you think?”



Deep breath. “Well. It looks to me like you’re not the only one getting fucked on this picture.”



Skouros stared at me. Then he straightened up from the corner of his desk. He walked around and sat down. From that moment on he spoke to me like a man. No more quarter-Cokes. The old man broke it down. Liz? Impossible to deal with. Emotional. Stubborn. Contrary. But Burton was a pro. And this wasn’t his first piece of primo tail. Our only chance was to reason with him. When he was sober.



Good luck with that. Your first assignment is to go to Rome and convince a SOBER Dick Burton that if he doesn’t lay off Liz Taylor he’s out of the picture. Right. I flew out the next day.



In Rome I saw right away it wouldn’t be easy. This wasn’t some on-set affair. They were in love. Even that old actress-dipper Burton was in deep with this one. First time in his life he isn’t slopping extras and hairdressers too. At the Grand Hotel I laid it out for him. Gave him Skouros’s whole message. Played it stern. Dick just laughed at me. I’d kick him off the film? Not likely.