The Player

The Player

by Michael Tolkin
The Player

The Player

by Michael Tolkin

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Overview

The “shrewd, entertainingly dark Hollywood novel” that inspired the award-winning Robert Altman film (The New York Times Book Review).
 
Hollywood insider Michael Tolkin perfectly skewers the movie-making business through the mind of Griffin Mill, senior vice president of production at a major Hollywood studio. Ruthlessly ambitious, Mill is driven to control the levers of America’s dream-making machinery. He listens to writers pitch him stories all day, sitting in judgment of their fantasies, their lives. But now one writer whose pitch he responded to so glibly is sending him mortally threatening postcards.
 
Squeezed between the threat to his life and the threat to his job, Mill’s deliberate and horrifying response spins him into a nightmare. Then he meets the sad and beautiful June Mercator and his obsession for her threatens to destroy them both.
 
“One of the most wounding and satirical of all Hollywood exposes.” —Los Angeles Times
 
“In its wry, acerbic description of life behind the studio gates Tolkin’s book recalls F. Scott Fitzgerald . . . and the vengeful comedy of Nathaniel West’s The Day of the Locust.” —The Philadelphia Inquirer

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781555847470
Publisher: Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Publication date: 04/01/2018
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 193
File size: 2 MB

About the Author

Michael Tolkin is an award-winning writer, director, and producer. His novels include The Player, The Return of the Player, Among the Dead, and Under Radar. For the film adaptation of The Player, Tolkin won the Writers Guild Award, the BAFTA Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, the PEN Center USA West Literary Award, and the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Crime Screenplay. Most recently, he has been a consulting producer and writer for the Showtime series Ray Donovan.

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

Just as Griffin suspected, there was a meeting in Levison's office without him. From the path outside the administration building he could see the back of Levison's couch on the second floor. Was the meeting over? Levison was shaking hands with someone; Griffin couldn't see who it was. He knew he was watching the end of his job. He debated whether he should go to his office or return to the screening room he'd just left. He could use the phone there to call Jan, his secretary, for messages. If he went straight to his office, he would pass Levison's, and he didn't want Celia, Levison's secretary to see him in this moment of shame. Well it is shame, he thought.

He stared at the notebook in his hands and hated Levison for putting it there. Levison had asked him to watch the directing debut of a British producer, an old friend. And out of respect for Levison and his friendships, Griffin had made a careful assessment of the film, since Levison said he hadn't time to see it before a meeting with the director. Did Levison really care about the film or his old friend? Not enough to screen the thing for himself. Twenty-one minutes into the movie, Griffin could have stopped it, because not enough had happened. He had stayed in the screening room to hide, because he knew that Levison needed him, literally, in the dark for a few hours. Griffin was used to hiding at the right moment. Once he had gone to Paris to hide, when a film he had supervised was coming out. The film was terrible, and he wanted to avoid the blame. That was only last year, when he had been heir apparent. Everyone thought Levison was finished, but Levison held on.

He went back to the screening room. When he opened the door, he saw the production staff of a television show about to watch the film they had shot the day before. He didn't know anyone's name, but they all knew his. He apologized for interrupting them, someone asked if he wanted to stay. It was a transparent flattery, and he closed the door. The room across the hall was empty. He called Jan.

"Griffin Mill's office."

"It's me." He sounded weak, something caught in his throat.

"You got another postcard. Maybe I should call Walter Stuckel." Stuckel was head of studio security.

"What does this one say?"

He waited while Jan went through the pile of mail on her desk. "It says, 'You said you'd get back to me. I'm still waiting.'"

"What's the picture?"

"It's a joke card. There's a wagon pulled by mules, and in the wagon there's this huge watermelon. It's some kind of a trick picture. It says, 'We grow' em big in Texas.' Come on, Griffin, let me call Walter."

"No. A watermelon? I think I know who it is."

"Tell me."

"If I tell you, you'll tell Celia, and then everyone will know."

"So what, whoever it is who sends these cards looks like the jerk, not you."

"Trust me, it's contagious."

"What is, looking like a fool?"

"Yes. Besides, I know who it is, it's either Aaron Jonas or Steve Baylen, probably Baylen."

"No," said Jan, "I don't think the cards are coming from an agent, I think your secret correspondent is a writer. If you ask me."

Griffin knew it was a writer. The cards began about four weeks ago, a few a week, and yesterday, one of them appeared in his mailbox at home. It was in his pocket now. He supposed he had been followed home. Friends have my address, he thought, but this isn't from a friend. Why hadn't he called Walter Stuckel? Why was he so scared of him?

"Jan, trust me, this is some jerk friend of mine playing a stupid game. Let's change the subject. Any calls?" "There's a meeting of all the department heads in Levison's office. You weren't invited."

"That's not a call."

"I thought you should know."

"Am I out?"

"Who knows?"

They said good-bye.

It was March, and when Griffin stepped out of the editors' building, the streets between the soundstages were empty. He wasn't sure why, but the idea that in this stillness lay all that was Hollywood excited him; he was almost embarrassed by this excitement over nothing, because there were no hordes of Indians and armies of Napoleon wandering around the lot, there was no sense of activity. Almost everyone said they hated the harsh yellow light that bounced off the high walls of the stages, but Griffin was not depressed by this calm. He liked the way he always separated into parts in the worst of the midday sun. It reminded him of marijuana, the pleasant terror of getting stoned in the middle of the day, of marching in step with the significance of things. Hot bright noons in Burbank were a kind of cosmic experience for him, because they were pointless, because the only tonic for the light, which was, in some sense, redemption's gleam, was money, work, authority. In what sense? he asked himself. In the sense that if Judgment Day is the only reason for conscience, then the bad feeling stirred by the light is an echo of some ultimate regret.

Now he was mad at this writer who had been sending him postcards. He took yesterday's card from his pocket. Paris Nightlife, the Eiffel Tower surrounded by cameos showing the Moulin Rouge, a fountain, Notre Dame. And the message. Typed, so the thin plastic coating of the card was broken, rippled: "You said you'd get back to me. We had a meeting, I told you my idea, you said you wanted to think about it, and you said that you'd get back to me. Well?"

The first postcard had come with a short message: "You said you'd get back to me." The handwriting was even, the letters a bit high and slanted but not eccentric, they were carefully spaced; it was like the impersonally romantic script of a love letter seen close-up in a movie. The postcard was probably from the early 1950s, a woman on the beach in Fort Lauderdale, under a bright orange umbrella. She wore extravagant sunglasses and a tortured smile. Griffin thought she would be happy that a Hollywood bigwig was finally looking at her. A few days later another postcard arrived, a glossy shot of the Eiffel Tower. The message was, "I'm waiting for your call." The day after that the third card came, with only one word. "Well?" The card was a picture of THE LATEST ADDITION TO UNITED'S FRIENDSHIP FLEET, a shortened version of the Boeing 747.

After that there were three more postcards, and none of them carried a message.

Across the street, he saw Mary Netter and Drew Posner, from Marketing. He braced himself for their buoyant onslaught. Drew waved his hand like the kid in fifth grade who has the answer all the time.

"Hey, Mister Vice President," he said. Griffin tapped an invisible hat brim.

"So cool," said Mary. Mary had short hair; a month ago it had been a crew cut. Once, at a party, Drew asked Griffin if he'd like to rub his dick over Mary's head. Mary's laughter had embarrassed Griffin, and he felt that embarrassment as proof of something bad about himself, an inability to play.

Levison's meeting was over, Griffin could see the back of the empty sofa by the window. He took the long way around the building to his office, to avoid passing Celia. The end of his job was inevitable. There would be other work, other studios, but the glow around him was probably lost, and he would never be the head of production, not for a major studio, not for this studio or Universal or Disney or Columbia or Paramount or 20th-Century Fox. These were the last studios with property, with soundstages and back lots, where you could point to a building and say, "That was Alan Ladd's dressing room" or "Over there we made Bringing Up Baby." And if it was sentimental of him to get a little pleasure out of the history of these buildings, did that harm anyone? If the Writer knew he had held on for this last bad year with Levison because he didn't want to leave the lot would he like Griffin a little, see him as just another human being with the full assembly of reasons to be unhappy? Would the Writer understand that even if Griffin were offered a great job as head of a company with offices in a tall building in Century City or Beverly Hills he might not want it, that the thought made him miserable? Orion and Tri-Star, big companies, were in office buildings, what difference did it make where they were? It just mattered to him, and he couldn't resist the gloom that soon he would have to give up a real studio with a real gate, trade in a parking space with his name painted on a concrete bumper for a pass to an underground garage. He wanted to say, how can you make a movie in an office building? That was another sentimental thought, but he caught himself and resisted the attack. Maybe he wasn't really sentimental enough. Wouldn't the studio's films have done better if he were more sentimental? Here he was, the centipede who tries to understand his own method, a sure way to stumble.

None of this was a surprise. For a few months Griffin had felt a slight change in the number of calls Jan logged during the day. One afternoon while she was away from her desk, Griffin had opened her files and compared a few days of recent phone logs with the logs from the year before. A year ago, in three days Griffin had received two hundred and ninety-five. In the last three days he had received two hundred and eleven. He hadn't counted the calls by category, but it looked at a few glances as though agents trying to sell him screenplays and directors were not calling him as often. He had no trouble getting calls returned, but something in the wind was telling people that Griffin Mill was not the best first choice anymore. Could the Writer sending him the postcards understand that they were in the same business, with the same rules for everyone?

When he walked into his office, Jan tickled the air in front of her, grinning. There was a postcard propped against her typewriter. HOLLYWOOD AT NIGHT, THREE VIEWS OF THE GLAMOUR CAPITAL OF THE WORLD.

"It went to Accounting by accident, they just sent it over. Look on the back."

"No."

"Come on, it's a girl who's sending you these cards, it has to be."

Griffin picked the card up and turned it over. The message: "Is it me, or is it you?"

"You were at a party," said Jan, "and you told some girl you'd make her a star, and she went to bed with you. You said you'd call her and you never did. You flashed her that big lover-boy smile of yours and you caught her on it."

"I don't have to lie to women."

"Honey, all men lie to women. It's in the blood."

Griffin had an instant of clarity, and he smiled, he relaxed, he leaned forward, he brought his face near Jan's, he liked himself for the first time in weeks. "You got me," he said. "It doesn't happen often. You know as a rule I don't mess with actresses."

"But they have such nice legs."

"I'll tell you the truth, it's not the length, it's the way they feel. It's the skin. It's how they get to be stars, too, it's something about the way they radiate. I'll tell you what happened. There was a party, I wasn't drunk, but she was. She told me to take her home. I took her home. I stayed a few hours. It was fun."

"And now she wants you to make her a star. Except you don't even remember her name. So you caught her on your smile. I hope she knows it's like your car, that you have to give it back when you're fired."

Griffin let the line pass, but he saw in Jan's eyes that she wished she hadn't said it. He pressed ahead with the story. "Are you ready for the punch line? She is a star. She's a television star, and she wants to make it in the movies. And she knows she never will, but she wants to try. And she thought I could help her."

"So why doesn't she sign her name? Maybe you're lying right now. Maybe she isn't a television star. How would you know, you don't watch television. You're ashamed to admit a one-night stand with a girl whose name you can't remember."

"Maybe she isn't a star?" Griffin said, trying to slump in defeat. Then he came back on the attack. "But you know why she won't sign? She's trying to be original. She thinks, of course I remember her, everyone else does. She didn't sign the postcards the way bad writers who don't have agents draw cartoons and write jokes on the envelopes of screenplays they send in to famous directors. They draw big noses sticking out of the flaps and stars around the directors' names. They think that if they can't be good, at least they can be different. They go to novelty shops that print YOUR NAME HERE on the headlines of phony front pages and send these stupid things as cover letters with their scripts. The headline says, STEVEN SPIELBERG WINS OSCAR FOR DIRECTING YOUR-NAME-HERE'S STUPID SCREENPLAY."

"It doesn't say 'stupid' on the headline."

"It doesn't have to."

"She's got to sign her name one of these days. Maybe she'll call you. Would you see her again?"

"I'll do what you tell me to do."

"Griffin, if she calls, or if you remember her name, or if she signs her name, be nice to her. If you use the casting couch, pay your debts."

"You'll be the first to know."

"The second," she said. She had closed the case.

Griffin's indignation developed a life of its own, and it remembered a party, an actress's long hair, kisses, promises. At dinner that night with Dick Mellen, his lawyer, Griffin heard himself babbling on about the postcards and the actress. Mellen, sixty-five, silver-haired, with a tan like brushed gold, had known Bogart, he had been drunk with Bogart a dozen times, which was why Griffin had hired him. Mellen didn't care about the cards.

"Put her in a movie," he said.

"But what if she can't act?" Griffin was surprised and annoyed with how shocked he sounded.

"That's what I'm telling you," said Mellen. "You know what they did in the old days? Prison movie. Visiting day. Long tracking shot down the room with all the little booths with the telephones. Wives and girlfriends, each one gets a close-up, each one the girlfriend of a different executive or producer."

"But she's the star of a television series."

"Which one?"

"I'm sworn not to say."

"Griffin, this isn't a joke."

"If she's any kind of grown-up, she'll keep it to herself."

"No. Grown-ups turn everything to their advantage and don't worry about scandal. At least they do in this town. If she's smart, her agent'll call Levison to talk about projects."

Griffin saw that he had lowered himself in Mellen's eyes, not for the actress but for making things inexcusably difficult.

Mellen changed the subject. "You know your job is not exactly secure right now."

"Everything will work out. We're making some good pictures." This was what he was supposed to say, and he didn't like the sound of it. The lie about the actress had upset his rhythm, he was measuring every thought now.

"I think they're bringing in Larry Levy."

Griffin exhaled, and with the rush of air again he tortured himself, this time for collapsing, for taking the news as a body blow, taking it badly. He always tried to contain the air, contain the feeling, not show too much excitement, not show unhappiness. This was the closest he came to meditation; when other executives whooped and slapped each other's palms if an audience cheered during the first sneak previews of a film, Griffin kept the feelings to himself. And now, instead of keeping the air inside, to stay firm, he was breaking one of his first rules. Without any control now he heard himself add another hatefully dull thought to the conversation. "Larry Levy's a jerk."

"Do you want to quit? I don't think you should."

"I'd like to run Columbia."

"You can't turn back the clock." The job had been offered a year ago, and Griffin had told them no. He had wanted Levison's job, and there was talk that he'd get it. The talk had been wrong.

"Keep your eyes open," said Griffin, another stupid phrase.

"That's what I do," said the lawyer.

Griffin wanted to tell Mellen that the story about the actress had been a lie, every word of it. If he told the truth, would the fissure between his thoughts and their expression be healed? Or was purification impossible without greater sacrifice and harder work?

(Continues…)


Excerpted from "The Player"
by .
Copyright © 1988 White Mountain Company.
Excerpted by permission of Grove Atlantic, Inc..
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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