Magic Hour, Susan Isaacs [life changing books txt] 📗

“Yeah. The autopsy. Listen, the guy was in fantastic shape.

I should have his liver. If he hadn’t backed up into those bullets, he’d have lived till a hundred. The thing is, Germy, I know more than I want to about all his organs. But I want to know about him. So I need 88 / SUSAN ISAACS

you. Even if you weren’t his best friend, you must know about him, about what he was doing.”

“Of course.”

“Okay, what do you know about Starry Night? ”

“Gossip or substance?”

“Both. Substance first; get it over with.”

Germy took off his glasses and gave the earpiece a thoughtful chew. “All right. I actually read an early draft of the script. It’s an action-adventure-love story about a charming heel who marries a very rich woman for her money.

Superficially she’s the frosty, sophisticated sort—a ‘Hamptons’ type, if you’ll forgive me. She’s overwhelmed by the heel’s magnetism and sexuality. Well, to make a convoluted story short, his past—dealing a little cocaine—catches up with him, and some Colombian types kidnap his wife for reasons the script does not adequately make clear. The heel doesn’t care at first. Then slowly he realizes he has fallen madly in love with the wife, and she…she’s tied up in a basement in…I’m a little foggy here, but I think in Bogotá.

Maybe Brooklyn. In any case, it dawns on her that he’s more than a charming stud; he’s the first true love of her life. He goes after her, she escapes, there’s a gratuitous car chase, the bad guys seem about to win. But in the end they live happily ever after.”

I sat still for a minute, staring out at the shimmering golden reflection of the sun in the bay. “Would a guy like me shell out six bucks to see it?”

“Hard to say, Steve. It’s a film about breaking through your shell, discovering your humanity. The script has some of the best dialogue I’ve read in years. Genuinely witty. And some fine straight moments, before the kidnapping, when each starts to reveal himself to the other and then pulls back, as if they realize they’re violating some unwritten Law of Superficiality of jet-set marriages. But it certainly MAGIC HOUR / 89

doesn’t cover any new ground. And as far as I can recall, the plot is pedestrian. But the characters are unusually well drawn for a postliterate script.” He slid his glasses back on. “In case you don’t know it, we are living in what is, essentially, a postliterate era.”

“Oh, I do know it. It’s a tragedy I’ve got to live with every day of my life.”

“I knew you’d feel that way.”

We sat in comfortable silence for a minute. When you know someone since you’ve been kids, you have a kind of ESP. I could sense Germy, like me, relaxing, lifting up his face to feel the sun, and wanting—really, desperately wanting—to talk about all the amazing things that had happened to the Yankees since Steinbrenner.

But I had a your-guess-is-as-good-as-mine homicide hanging over my head, so I made myself stick to the subject. “It sounds like maybe you have a qualm about the Starry Night script.”

“Well, it could make an exciting, stylish film. But it’s all in the execution. Will the actors be credible? Will you believe in the possibility of a great love between Lindsay Keefe and Nicholas Monteleone? His appeal has always been more emotional than sexual. He’s essentially a man’s man; all his best movies have been about relationships between men—rodeo riders, Amazon explorers…” He grinned.

“Homicide cops. But the question about whether the movie will work goes beyond the two principals: Will the Colombians be offensively stereotypical Latino greasers or genuinely terrifying? How good a job will the director do on the action sequences? Will the big chase scene come off? Also, the real problem—the reason Sy didn’t get studio financing—is that it was felt there is a limited audience for this type of vehicle: Cary Grant cum balls. It probably won’t play to the 90 / SUSAN ISAACS

under-twenty-fives. It’s not moving enough to be another The Way We Were. And it’s not a sizzler; even if Lindsay does bare her breasts once again, or decides it’s time for a change and moons the camera, it won’t help. First of all, audiences have seen her body too many times; there’s a strong inclination to say: ‘Please, madam, keep your shirt on.’ In the script, the compelling sex is verbal, lighthearted man-woman word play, not sex play.” He leaned back and clasped his hands behind his head. “Is that substantive enough?”

“Yeah. Now what about money? I’ve heard twenty big ones. Where does that kind of dough come from?”

“Private investors. Or banks who had faith in Sy’s track record.”

“If you were a bank, what kind of faith would you have?”

Germy unclasped his hands, then crossed his arms over his chest. “I’d invest—although not twenty million. That seems awfully high for a film that will be shot primarily out here and in Manhattan, even with all the lavish set decoration and costumes and an anxious director who’s known for a lot of retakes. But forgetting dollars and cents, Sy’s films were really good. Bankable. He believed in starting with a polished script. He’d go for the gifted actor over the big name. I always admired his movies.”

“Just admired? You ever love any of them?”

He took a minute to consider the question. “No. I can’t really explain it, but there was something a little smug about every picture he produced. Each one seemed to be saying:

‘Aren’t I sensitive? Provocative? Don’t I have superb production values?’ There was always intelligence and care, but never any real spirit. I suppose his films were like Sy himself.”

MAGIC HOUR / 91

“From the little you knew him, what did he seem like?”

“Intelligent. Polished but not slick. And for the movie business, where hugging and kissing and screaming ‘Dahlink, you’re a very great genius’ is an institutional requirement, he was