it. Just take the meeting and we'll see what they want.”
What they wanted was a completely different story. Having fallen in love with his idea of the art-world backdrop, Brode now wanted a movie about how commerce corrupts artists. Columbia had an art project in development, and he was determined to beat its release. We could keep the drug element—the big-shot gallery owner was also involved in the coke trade. I sat in Brode's huge white office, trying to figure out where the white walls ended and the white leather furniture began, trying to see the virtues of this new story and to recognize some shred of my own script.
Nodding like an idiot, I practically called him a genius and said I didn't know why I hadn't seen all this potential in the first place. Back home, though, I called my agent and screamed at her about the stupidity of studio executives and the way art was corrupted by commerce. She listened patiently. Finally I concluded, “Well, at least I get paid to be a whore.”
She said, “Try to pick out the virtues in his concept. I'll work on the money.”
“What do you mean,‘work on the money’? It's in the contract.”
“Of course,” she said.
I sat down again and tried to be professional about the whole thing, which is to say I tried not to give a shit. Three weeks later I delivered the new draft. I'd just bought a new car, a little Beamer, with my first check. When my agent called one morning to talk about another project, I said, “When do I get paid for my second draft?”
“We're calling that a polish instead of a draft.”
“A polish? It was a whole new story, however stupid. I knocked myself out. Are you trying to tell me I'm not getting paid? What about the contract?”
“Look, Martin, you're new at this. Brode says it's a polish, and he wants you to do one more polish before he shows it to the head of production.”
I was beginning to understand. “You mean I get paid for a second draft, but it's not a draft unless Brode says it is.”
“Let's just say it behooves us to give Danny Brode some slack at this point. You don't want to get known as a difficult writer. Give him one more polish and I promise you it'll be worth your while in the long run.”
When I threatened to go to the Writers Guild, she said she'd hate to end our professional relationship.
Maybe you've heard the one about the devil who goes to the agent and says, “I'll give you any client you want—Cruise, Costner, Pacino, you name it—in exchange for your immortal soul for all eternity.” And the agent says, “What's the catch?”
I stopped trusting my agent from that moment on, but I followed her advice. I wrote three drafts, got paid for one, and the project was in turnaround within six months. Though I didn't see Brode for a couple of years, in a sense my agent was right. I was bankable because I'd had a deal, and that led to other deals, and within a couple years I had my first movie in production and moved into a house in Benedict Canyon. And whenever I needed a villain for a story, someone rich and powerful to harass the protagonists, I had vivid impressions to draw on.
Danny Brode became even more rich and powerful. He married into a Hollywood dynasty and shortly thereafter was running the studio his in-laws controlled. Consolidation of power through marriage was established procedure in this particular family. Brode's father-in-law was supposed to be affiliated with a major crime family. In the film community it was whispered that in a premarital conference Brode had been made to understand cheating on his wife would constitute his precipitous fall from grace. This was considered slightly bizarre, since everybody fucked around in proportion to their power and wealth, most of all people who owned studios and casinos. But the old boy was apparently overfond of his first daughter.
“Some nice Faustian elements in this situation,” I said to the lunch partner who first filled me in on this story. I once heard someone say there are only seven basic stories, but in this business there's only one. In Hollywood the story is always Faust.
“Some nice what?” he said.
I smiled. “I was just thinking of an old German film.”
Brode got even fatter. In a town where everybody had a personal trainer and green salads were considered a