Beautiful Ruins (81)

Thirty-six hours into the biggest assignment of my life and my bluff’s been called. An A-bomb couldn’t keep Dick and Liz apart.



And no wonder. This was the greatest Hollywood romance in history. Not just some set-screw. Love. All those cute couples now with their conjoined names? Pale imitations. Mere children.



Dick and Liz were gods. Pure talent and charisma and like gods they were terrible together. Awful. A gorgeous nightmare. Drunk and narcissistic and cruel to everyone around them. If only the movie had the drama of these two. They’d film a scene as flat as paper and as soon as the cameras cut Burton would make some wry comment and she’d hiss something back and she’d storm off and he’d chase her back to the hotel and the hotel staff would report these ungodly sounds of breaking glass and yelling and balling and you couldn’t tell the fighting from the fucking with those two. Empty booze decanters flying over hotel balconies. Every day a car wreck. A ten-car pileup.



And that’s when it came to me.



I call it the moment of my birth.



Saints call it epiphany.



Billionaires call it brainstorm.



Artists call it muse.



For me it was when I understood what separated me from other people. A thing I’d always been able to see but never entirely understood. Divination of true nature. Of motivation. Of desirous hearts. I saw the whole world in a flash and I recognized it at once:



We want what we want.



Dick wanted Liz. Liz wanted Dick. And we want car wrecks. We say we don’t. But we love them. To look is to love. A thousand people drive past the statue of David. Two hundred look. A thousand people drive past a car wreck. A thousand look.



I suppose it is cliché now. Obvious to the computer gewgaw-counters with their hits and eyeballs and page views. But this was a transformational moment for me. For the town. For the world.



I called Skouros in L.A. “This can’t be fixed.”



The old man was quiet. “Are you telling me I need to send someone else?”



“No.” I was talking to a five-year-old. “I’m saying this . . . can’t . . . be fixed. And you don’t want to fix it.”



He fumed. This wasn’t someone used to getting bad news. “What the fuck are you talking about?”



“How much do you have into this picture?”



“The actual cost of a film isn’t—”



“How much?”



“Fifteen.”



“You have twenty in if you have a dime. Conservatively you’ll spend twenty-five or thirty before it’s done. And how much will you spend on publicity to recoup thirty mil?”



Skouros couldn’t even say the number.



“Commercials and billboards and ads in every magazine in the world. Eight? Let’s say ten. Now you’re up to forty mil. No picture in history has ever made forty. And let’s be clear. This picture’s no good. I’ve had crabs more enjoyable than this picture. This picture gives shit a bad name.”



Was I killing Skouros? You bet I was. Only to save him.



“But what if I could get you twenty million in FREE publicity?”



“That’s not the kind of publicity we want!”



“Maybe it is.” Then I explained what it was like on set. The drinking. Fighting. Sex. When the cameras ran it was death. But with the cameras off? You couldn’t take your eyes off them. Marc Antony and Cleo-fucking-patra? Who gave a shit about those old moldered bones? But Liz and Dick? THIS is our movie. I told Skouros that as long as this thing rages between them the movie’s got a chance.



Put this fire out? Hell no. What we need to do is stoke it.



It’s easy to see now. In this world of fall and redemption and fall again. Of comeback after comeback. Of carefully released home sex tapes. But no one had thought this way before. Not about movie stars! These were Greek gods. Perfect beings. When one of them fell it was forever. Fatty Arbuckle? Dead. Ava Gardner? Done.



I was suggesting burning the whole town down to save this one house. If I pulled this off people would see our picture not in spite of the scandal but because of it. After this you could never go back. Gods would be dead forever.



I could hear Skouros breathing on the other end of the phone. “Do it.” Then he hung up.



That afternoon I bribed Liz’s driver. When she and Burton came out onto the patio of the villa they’d rented to hide out in camera shutters started popping from balconies in three directions. Photographers I’d tipped. Next day I hired my own shooter to stalk the couple. Made tens of thousands selling those photos. Used that money to bribe more drivers and makeup people for information. I had my own little industry. Liz and Dick were furious. They begged me to find out who was leaking information and I pretended to find out. I fired drivers and extras and caterers and soon Dick and Liz were relying on me to book their remote getaways and still the photographers found them.



And did it work? It broke bigger than any movie story you’ve ever seen. Liz and Dick in every newspaper in the world.