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 cliché 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!”