15.

The Rejected First Chapter of Michael Deane's Memoir 2006.

Los Angeles, California ACTION.

Now where to start? Birth the man says.

Fine. I was birthed fourth of six to the bride of a savvy lawyer in the city of angels in the year 1939. But I was not truly BORN until the spring of 1962.

When I discovered what I was meant to do.

Before that life was what it must be for regular people. Family dinners and swimming lessons. Tennis. Summers with cousins in Florida. Fumbles with easy girls behind the school-house and movie theater.

Was I the brightest? No. Best-looking? Not that either. I was what they called Trouble. Capital T. Envious boys routinely took swings. Girls slapped. Schools spit me out like a bad oyster.

To my father I was The Traitor. To his name and his plans for me: Study abroad. Law school. Practice at HIS firm. Follow HIS footsteps. HIS life. Instead I lived mine. Pomona College for two years. Studied broads. Dropped out in 1960 to be in pictures. A bad complexion shot pocks in my plans. So I decided to learn the biz from inside. Starting at the bottom. A job in publicity at 20th Century Fox.

We worked in the old Fox Car Barn next to the greasy Teamsters. Talked on the phone all day to reporters and gossip columnists. We tried to get good stories in the papers and keep bad ones out. At night I went to openings and parties and benefits. Did I love it? Who wouldn't? A different lady on my arm every night. The sun and the strip and the sex? Life was electric.

My boss was a fat jug-eared Midwesterner named Dooley. He kept me close because I was fresh. Because I threatened him. But one morning Dooley wasn't in the office. A frantic call came in. Some sharp was at the studio gate with some interesting photos. A well-known cowboy actor at a party. One of our rising stars. What wasn't so well-known was that this fellow was also a first-class puff. And these pictures showed him blowing reveille on another fella's bugle. Most animated performance this particular actor ever gave.

Dooley would be in the next day. But this couldn't wait. First I reached out to a gossip columnist who owed me. Planted the rumor that the cowboy actor was engaged to a young actress. A rising B-girl. How did I know she'd go for it? She was a girl I'd beefed a few times myself. Having her name connected to a bigger star was the fastest way to the front of the skinnys. Sure she went for it. In this town everything flows upstream. Then I strolled to the gate and casually hired the photographer to shoot promo stills for the studio. Burned the negs of the cowboy-hummer myself.

I got the call at noon. Had it taken care of by five. But next day Dooley was furious. Why? Because Skouros had called. And the head of the studio wanted to see ME. Not him.

Dooley prepped me for an hour. Don't look old Skouros in the eye. Don't use profanity. And whatever you do NEVER disagree with the man.

Fine. I waited outside Skouros's office an hour. Then I stepped inside. He was perched on the corner of his desk. Wore a funeral director's suit. A thick man with black glasses and slick hair. He gestured to a chair. Offered me a Coca-Cola. "Thank you." The tight Greek bastard opened the bottle. He poured a third of it into a glass and handed me the glass. He held the rest of that Coke like I hadn't earned it yet. He sat there on the corner of that desk and watched me drink my tiny Coke while he asked me questions. Where was I from? What did I hope to do? What was my favorite picture? He never even mentioned the cowboy star. And what does this big studio boss want from the Deane?

"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.

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 cliche 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.

Dick's wife found out. And Liz's husband. The story got even bigger. I told Skouros to have patience. To ride it out.

Then poor Eddie Fisher flew to Rome to try to win his wife back and suddenly I had a new problem. For this to work Liz and Dick had to be together when the film wrapped. When the picture opened on Sunset I needed Dick to be boning Liz in the dining room of the Chateau Marmont. And I needed Eddie Fisher to go limping away. But the son of a bitch wanted to fight for his doomed marriage.

The other problem with Liz's husband being in Rome was Burton. He sulked. Drank. And he went back to this other woman he'd been seeing on the side off and on since his first day in Italy.

She was tall and blond. Uncommon-looking girl. Camera loved her. All the actresses then were either coupes or sedans. Broads or girls-next-door. But this was something else. Something new. She had no film experience. Came from the stage. Mankie inexplicably cast her as Cleopatra's lady-in-waiting from nothing more than a casting photo. Figured he'd make Liz look more Egyptian by making one of her slaves blond. Little did he know one of Liz's ladies-in-waiting was actually waiting for Dick.

Christ. I couldn't believe it when I saw her. Who puts a tall blond woman in a movie set in ancient Egypt?

I'll call this girl D-.

This D- was what we'd later call a free spirit. One of those moon-eyed easygoing hippie girls I'd get so much joy out of in the sixties and seventies.

Not that I ever beefed this particular one.

Not that I wouldn't have.

But with Eddie Fisher skulking around Rome Dick went running back to his backup. This D-. I didn't figure her to be a problem. Girl like that you just throw a bone. A cherry role. A studio contract. And if she won't play you fire her. What's that cost? So I had Mankiewicz start giving her five A.M. calls to get her on set. Get her away from Burton. But then she got sick.

We had an American doctor on set. This man Crane. His whole job was to prescribe meds for Liz. He examined this girl D-. Pulled me aside the next day.

"We got a problem. The girl is pregnant. Doesn't know it yet. Some quack doc told her she can't have kids. Well she can."

Of course I'd arranged abortions before. I worked in publicity. It was practically on the business card. But this was Italy. Catholic Italy 1962. At that time it would have been easier to get a moon rock.

Shit. Here I'm leaking that the two biggest stars in the biggest picture in the world are together and I've got to deal with this? Disaster Deane. If Cleopatra comes out and everyone's talking about our stars' torrid affair we got a chance. If they're talking about Burton knocking up some extra and Liz going back to her husband? We're dead.

I put together a three-part plan. First: get rid of Burton for a while. I knew Dickie Zanuck was in France filming The Longest Day. And I knew he wanted Burton for a cameo to class up his war picture. I knew Burton wanted to do it. But Skouros hated Dick Zanuck. He'd replaced Zanuck's old man at Fox and there were people on the Fox board who wanted to replace him with dashing young Dickie. So I went behind Skouros's back. I called Zanuck and rented him Burton for ten days.

Then I called the doctor and told him to bring this girl D- in for more tests. "What kind of tests?" he said.

"You're the goddamned doctor! Whatever might get her out of town for a while."

I was afraid he'd be squirrelly. Hippocratic oath and all that. But this Crane jumped at the chance. Next day he comes up with a big smile. "I told her she had stomach cancer."

"YOU WHAT?"

Crane explained that the early symptoms of pregnancy were consistent with those of stomach cancer. Cramps and nausea and a bunged-up period.

I'd wanted to get rid of her not kill the poor girl.

Doc said not to worry. He'd told her it was treatable. A Swiss doctor with a new procedure. Then he winked. Of course the doctor in Switzerland puts her under. Gives her the short procedure. And when she wakes up her "cancer" is gone. She's never the wiser. We send her back to the States to recuperate. And I get her work in some pictures back home. Everyone wins. Problem solved. Movie saved.

But this D- was a wild card. Her mother had died of cancer and she took the phony diagnosis worse than bad. And I underestimated Dick's feelings for her.

On the other front Eddie Fisher had given up and gone home. I called Dick in France to tell him the good news. Liz was ready to see him again. But he couldn't see Liz right now. This other girl D- had cancer. She was dying. And Dick wanted to be there for her.

"She'll be fine. There's a doctor in Switzerland who-"

Dick interrupted me. This D- didn't want treatment. She wanted to spend the last of her time with him. And the man was narcissistic enough to think this was a good idea. He's got a two-day break on The Longest Day and he wants to meet D- on the coast in Italy. And since I was so helpful with him and Liz he wants me to set it up.

What could I do? Burton wants to meet her in this remote little coastal town. Portovenere. Right between Rome and the south of France where he's shooting The Longest Day. I opened the map and my eye went straight to this flea speck with a similar name. Porto Vergogna. I ask the travel agent to look into it. She says the town is nothing. A cliff-side fishing village. No phones or roads. Can't even get there by train or car. Only by boat. "Is there a hotel?" I asked. Travel agent said there was a tiny one. So I booked a room in Portovenere for Dick but I sent D- to Porto Vergogna. Told her to wait at the little hotel for Burton. I just needed to stow her for a few days until Dick went back to France and I could get her to Switzerland.

At first it worked. She was stuck in this village. No contact with the world. Burton showed up in Portovenere and found me waiting for him instead. I told him D- had decided to go on to Switzerland for treatment. Don't worry about her. The Swiss doctors are the best. Then I drove him back to Rome to be with Liz.

But before I could get them back together another problem arrived. Some kid from the hotel where D- is staying shows up in Rome and walks right up and punches me. I'd been in Rome three weeks and I'd gotten used to these Italians gouging me so I gave him some cash and sent him away. But he double-crossed me. Found Burton and told him the whole story. How D- wasn't dying. How she was pregnant. Then he took Burton back to her. Great. Now Dick is holed up with his pregnant mistress in a hotel in Portovenere. And my movie hangs in the balance.

But did the Deane give up? Not by a long stretch. I called Dickie Zanuck and got Burton back to France for a day of phony reshoots on The Longest Day. And I raced to Portovenere to talk to this D-.

I've never seen someone so angry. She wanted to kill me. And I understood why. I did. I apologized. Explained that I had no idea the doctor would say it was cancer. Told her the whole thing had gotten out of hand. Told her that her career was made. Guaranteed. All she had to do was go to Switzerland and she could be in any Fox picture she wanted.

But this was one tough nut. She didn't want money or acting jobs. I couldn't believe it. I'd never met a young actor who didn't want either work or money or both.

This was when I understood the deep responsibility behind my ability to divine desire. It's one thing to know what people truly want. It's another to CREATE that want in them. To BUILD that desire.

I pretended to sigh. "Look. This got out of hand. All he wants is for you to get the abortion and stay quiet about it. So you tell me how we can do that."