How It Ended: New and Collected Stories - By Jay McInerney Page 0,138
carved syllables of her trained speech softening, liquefying like the cubes in her glass. But the fact is, she didn't have any juice in the industry. I didn't mind. I eventually landed an agent on my own, at which point I figured it was time to make the leap of faith. Plus, my girlfriend announced that she was in love with my best friend and that they'd been sleeping together for six months.
I sublet my apartment and rented a place in Venice, three blocks from the beach. This was in February, and I loved exchanging the frozen, crusty city for a place smelling of flowers and the ocean. At the same time, more than anywhere else in Southern California, Venice reminded me of New York, with its general shabbiness. There were plenty of bums, just so I wouldn't get too homesick, and the crime rate was also pretty impressive. But basically I felt the same way about California that Keats did about Chapman's Homer. I quit smoking, ate plenty of fruit and vegetables, started sleeping regular hours.
One thing I didn't do was rush out to join AA, which was just then becoming really hip. If I had, I probably would've met some girls. But I was still under the thrall of the writer-as-holy-lush idea. Who could imagine Raymond Chandler sober? One of my favorite stories involved Joseph Mankiewicz, the other genius behind Citizen Kane, who arrived drunk one night—not uncharacteristically—at an elaborate A-list dinner party. He then got drunker, and finally evacuated the contents of his stomach all over the table. As the other guests looked on, horrified, Mankiewicz turned to his hostess and said, “Don't worry—the white wine came up with the fish.”
In Venice, my second-story studio had a little terrace off the back. I'd wake up early most mornings and take my computer out there, overlooking a tiny courtyard choked with cacti, palms and flowering bushes. Having grown up in the intemperate zones, I'm still a little thrilled by the sight of a palm tree. My landlady believed that nature should be allowed to take its course and she just let it all grow. The couple across the way believed in nature, too; they fucked at all hours with the shades up, and I couldn't help seeing them, usually her bobbing up and down on top of him, facing me. I guess she was performing. Maybe she thought I was a casting director. … Anyway, I appreciated it, since that was as close as I was getting to carnal knowledge.
My second screenplay opens with this very long scene, close on couple making love, girl on top, camera pulling back out the window, reverse angle on the guy watching from his terrace. Eventually, the girl and the guy on the terrace—a writer, of course—meet and have this incredible affair. She decides to leave her boyfriend, but of course he turns out to be a coke dealer involved with some very heavy Colombians, and the girl knows enough about the gang to implicate them in a murder. Except she doesn't realize it until …
Believe it or not, this screenplay attracted the interest of a fairly important producer. That was when I first met Danny Brode. The producer had a first-look deal with the studio where Brode was the new vice president of production. The meeting Brode scheduled for me was my first with a studio executive. I spent about three hours that morning trying to figure out what to wear and whether to shave. Finally I shaved and put on a white shirt, tie, blazer and jeans. Brode made me wait an hour, and when I was ushered into his dazzling white office, he shook my hand and said, “What, you got a funeral or a wedding today?” When I looked baffled, he said, “The tie, dude.” So I knew I'd worn the wrong thing, and knew he knew I'd worn the tie for him.
Brode was wearing jeans and a work shirt that barely held him in. Standing about five six, the man weighed three hundred if he weighed an ounce. He had D-cup cheeks, and his chin would've made another man's potbelly. Not exactly the guy to be handing out advice on appearances. Anyway, he told me he'd been running late all day and had to drive out to the Valley to check on a film in postproduction, and asked if we could take the meeting in his car.