Who Killed Jenny Schecter? Ch. 12

Chapter 12 Follow Some of the Money

Although Carmen hadn't done production assistant work at Aaron Kornbluth's studio in nearly five years, she still knew the studio's ins, outs, alleyways, streets and buildings better than Shane did; studios don't change much. She led them from the commissary, down a street behind a sound stage filled with bandaged, wounded Nazi prisoners-of-war and a few dozen U.S. Army soldiers "guarding" them with unloaded, harmless rifles while they sunned, drank smoothies and waited for the next shot.

"Hey, Carmen," an S.S. stormtrooper with his arm in a sling greeted her, waving his "injured" and "bloody" hand.

"Eddie! Hey, how's it going? How's your mom?" Carmen turned and walked backward so she could continue talking.

"She's good. We lost Dad last year."

"Oh, I'm so sorry. Give her a hug for me," she said.

"Will do."

"Better get that arm looked at," she called. He laughed and attempted a lame Nazi salute with it.

They turned a corner, crossed the street and entered the main administrative offices. Aaron's office suite was on the top floor, the fourth. It was large and well-appointed, but certainly not in the class of a Louis B. Mayer or a Jack Warner.

"This is nice," Lauren said, "but not what I expected."

"How so?" Carmen asked, after they had introduced themselves to the receptionist and were asked to seat themselves in the reception area, since Aaron hadn't yet returned from lunch and they were 15 minutes early anyway.

"Not ... extravagant. No Greek statues, Roman columns, tons of wealth showing everywhere. Gold-plated doorknobs. No Mona Lisa on the wall."

"Aaron could certainly afford most of that if he wanted," Carmen said, "but he's not that kind of movie exec. I'm sure he's got all the creature comforts he wants, but he's more modest than a lot of the people in this town, at least when it comes to flaunting it."

Just then Aaron came striding into the suite, trailed by another man. They wore sports coats but no neckties. "Hey, Shane, Carmen, good to see you again. You must be Detective Hancock. I'm Aaron Kornbluth, come on, everybody, let's go to my office. Deb, hold my calls. Oh, I'm sorry, folks, this is Howard Nichols, my CFO." Aaron went into an inner office as Nichols turned to greet everyone.

"Hi, Howard Nichols," he said, shaking hands with Lauren. "Shane, I don't think we've met. I'm Howard Nichols. Carmen! We did meet, but you almost certainly don't remember, you were maybe 13 or 14, your Uncle Mike brought you onto the lot. I think we were shooting House of Horrors, and he was the lighting guy. Since it was dark and spooky, he didn't have a lot to do."

Carmen laughed. "I remember it like yesterday," she said, flashing her best smile. "I apologize if I don't remember you, but that was the day Uncle Mike introduced me to Trevor Wilson and Bonnie Lane, and I had stars in my eyes all day long."

"Did you get their autographs?" Nichols asked.

"Oh, god, yes," Carmen laughed. "And you know what? I still have them."

"I believe it. Come on, we better get in there before Aaron gets arrested."

They went into Aaron's office, where Carmen joined Lauren and Shane on a large couch while Aaron sat opposite them in a wing chair and Howard took a seat at the side of the room.

Shane leaned over to Carmen and whispered quietly, "What's a CFO?"

"Chief financial officer," Carmen whispered back, her lips hardly moving. "Like a treasurer. The money guy who does the books. Or supervises the guys who do the books."

"You all had lunch? You need coffee or water or anything?" Aaron asked.

"We're fine, thanks," Lauren said, and Carmen and Shane raised their hands in a "No, thanks" gesture.

"Okay, then," Aaron said. "I took the liberty of inviting Howard, here, because he's my accounting officer, and I know from your interview with Adele this morning you were interested in the money angle."

"Thanks," Lauren said. "Yes, we are." If she was pissed about Adele running to tell Aaron everything they'd asked and she'd answered, Lauren never showed it. She had expected as much. "Adele wasn't exactly sure, but she thought the studio lost about four or four and a half million on Lez Girls, is that about right?" She deliberately pronounced Lez with the Z on it, the first half of "lesbian."

"It crept up to pretty close to five," Howard said without waiting for Aaron. "The increase is mostly relatively minor costs for winding down production. Nothing unusual. And it would have been higher if we'd actually finished the movie and put it out there. We had nearly zero post-production costs, no editing, no sound, no music. No promotion and distribution."

"Is there a ballpark estimate?" Lauren asked.

Howard glanced at Aaron who waved it back to Howard.

"Ballpark? Oh, seven, eight million, depending on how much promotion and advertising we would have given it."

"How much would the studio have made on it? Really wild-ass ballpark."

"Well, you know how that goes, it's really impossible to even guess. Some movies tank, and lose vast amounts of money. Then comes along some low-budget indie that grosses 300 mil. It's inexplicable."

"But you must have had some expectations for Lez Girls, right? What's the term you use? You 'green-lighted' it, right?"

Aron sighed and took for himself a moment. "If I'm wearing my publicity hat, my quote-for-the-press hat, then yes, we had high hopes, as we always do, as every studio always does. Now, taking those hats off and pouring myself a strong drink, not for attribution... well, no. I think Shane and maybe Carmen already heard the rumor that we got cold feet about the subject matter, lesbianism, and that we were madly trying to re-focus it as best we could."

"You chickened out," Carmen said flatly. There was no attitude in her voice, but it was clear she wasn't going to tolerate bullshit.

Aaron sighed again. "Yeah, we did, but not for the reasons you think, and you're not gonna like the answer. We're off the record and not for attribution ... but, no, not our finest moment. And I'm the big cheese here, I'm the head of the studio, and I take responsibility for the decision to water it down. Look, here's what happened. The early rushes we looked at, the first week or two of shooting, the rushes looked pretty good. The casting seemed pretty good, the acting was okay, the script raised some interesting questions, there were some likeable characters people could identify with." He turned to Howard. "When did we first start changing our minds, Howard? Third week? Fourth?"

Howard shrugged. "Yes, in there. But yes, definitely by the end of the fourth week, for certain."

"It was going south," Aaron said. "It happens. Some productions just collapse of their own weight, the actors hate each other, they hate the director, the director hates them, whatever. The script falls apart. There's no chemistry, or the chemistry goes to hell, same thing, you see that a lot. One of the key actors turns out to be having a bad week or a bad month, is getting a divorce or has a drinking problem or too much blow. Or, hell, maybe they just can't act. They stink. Shit, there's a thousand reasons and a thousand ways. "

"So what was it with Lez Girls?" Lauren persisted.

Aaron looked away and wouldn't make eye contact.

"Come on," Lauren said quietly. "We're all adults here. Whatever you say, it won't leave this room."

"I feel bad saying it, with Shane in the room."

"You want me to leave? I'll wait outside," Shane said.

"Stay where you are," Lauren said quietly.

"I'll say it," Shane said. "I know what was wrong with Lez Girls. I know what Aaron doesn't want to say."

"Okay," Lauren said.

"It was the director," Shane said. "She didn't know what she was doing. She got in deeper and deeper and started floundering. She went into diva mode. She was fucking her star actress, the power and money went to her head. She was drunk on power, and drunk on pussy. She became a lunatic. A lunatic who was incompetent, who didn't know what she was doing. The demons were running the production."

There was silence. Finally Aaron said quietly, "I didn't want to hurt your feelings."

"Thank you," Shane said. "I appreciate it. But I know she was heading off the rails. Maybe I knew it at the time, subconsciously, I don't know. My subconcious and I don't talk all that much."

"Yes," Aaron said. "What was happening off-screen, behind the scenes, all the crazy stuff. Jenny fucking Niki, who we were still being told was straight. Christ, if we could have put half the offstage drama onto the screen we might have had a decent movie. Anyway, we're looking at the dailies and it's a mess. No other word for it. Scenes that don't make sense. Some pretty awful dialogue. Jenny's got on her European auteur panties, thinks she's Jenny Luc Goddard or some fucking thing, there's these long moody shots that seem to be trying to show anguish on Niki's face, but if you know Niki you can imagine what existential angst looks like on the face of a Valley Girl."

"So then what happened?" Lauren prompted.

"I'd been getting quiet reports from Adele, so we knew what was going on, the rushes only confirmed what she was telling us."

"The movie sucked."

"Right," Aaron said.

"So what happened next?"

"A miracle," Aaron said. "The Subaru Weekend happened. Then on Monday morning Adele comes in with a sex tape, and in the space of a day everything turned around. Jenny's out, Adele's in. Now, yes, I know, Adele didn't know a lot about directing a movie herself, but the way we figured, she couldn't possibly be worse than Jenny. If Adele fucks up, great, we blame her and Jenny both, and we write it off. Happens more often than you think. If she turns it around, we're golden and Adele's a hero. Basically, win-win."

"So did Adele save it?"

"Hard to say. The new rushes weren't too bad, but some of my people started to get nervous. They wanted the ending changed. Happy ending when the girl decides to go back to her boyfriend. No more lesbian angst." He glanced at Shane and Carmen. "Sorry."

"Forget it, Jake, it's Chinatown," Carmen said.

Aaron shrugged and turned back to Lauren. "Anything else?"

"The negatives get stolen. How'd you hear about it?"

"The film editors came in to work the next morning, and could find them. Nobody really panicked at first, they just started calling around, see if the lab still had them. Took a while to figure out they were gone, and finally somebody calls me. Then we're in a full-blown panic."

"Why didn't you call the police?"

Aaron smiled broadly. "You're kidding right?"

"Did you suspect blackmail or extortion? Before you got the note, I mean."

"Oh, sure, right away. At first I thought it was Tina, and we yelled at each other, but she was right, and I saw she had nothing to gain. We all started thinking it was Jenny, the whole revenge slash fuck you thing. So why didn't we call the police? No offense, but the LASD would have leaked it in, oh, I don't know. Twenty minutes? Half an hour? Film at 11. Mediocre lesbian melodrama suddenly gets more publicity than the Super Bowl. Gay rights people going berserk, marchers at the studio gates. The entire cast being interviewed non-stop. Fifteen, twenty totally bogus ransom demands coming in, asking ten, twenty million to get the negatives back. I mean, seriously, jeez. So yeah, we clamped down on it. Carmen, you're savvy about this business. Am I wrong? Wouldn't there have been a media storm like this town hasn't seen since the Manson murders or O.J. Simpson?"

"No, you're right," Carmen said. "The phrase 'media circus" would be a major understatement."

"Did you ever suspect Niki Stevens?" Lauren asked.

"No, truth to tell, we didn't. I was surprised when I found out."

"Any reason you didn't you suspect her?"

Aaron shrugged. "Frankly, I never thought she had the brain power. I know now I was wrong about that. Have you interviewed her? Do know what her motive was?"

"She's on my list to re-interview," Lauren said. "We know she was pissed at Jenny, so that may have been the motive, but it's just a guess at this point. Let me ask you this. What did you think about the ransom demand you got?"

Aaron glanced at Howard, and both men grinned. "Well, to tell you the truth, we had just about decided to tell the ransom person, whoever it was -- and we didn't know, at the time -- to just go fuck themselves. Adele's rushes looked better than Jenny's, and we made the decision to change the ending, which as you know got us a lot of internal flack, and looked like it would get even more if we released it and then got a shitstorm of even more criticism when the internal flack got out—"

"Which it certainly would," Howard said quietly from his corner.

"—Which it certainly would," Aaron confirmed. "We hadn't fully made a decision, but I think we were about 90 percent of the way to saying thanks but no thanks, just keep the negatives and let us know how it works out for you, but you can't do shit with them if we don't buy them back. Which, of course, they couldn't. Howard, you agree."

"Oh, yes, no question. I guess there were, what Aaron? Five or six of us discussing it, one or two PR people, my insurance guy, our top production guy. We were all pretty much decided against paying. We could get most of our money back through insurance loss and write-off, versus spending an additional an uncessary half million or million or whatever the ransom was finally settled on. So we spend that half mil, and get our negatives back, and we're still looking at a couple more mil to edit, promote and distribute the thing. And then we still have the impending shitstorm about the ending."

"The other thing is," Aaron said, "even if the negatives hadn't been stolen, we might very well have just terminated Lez Girls anyway. Anyway, that's my hindsight, for what it's worth."

"Do I hear you saying Niki Stevens did you a favor by stealing the negatives? Is that why you didn't want to press charges?"

"Well, doing us a favor is going too far. But yes, sure, in hindsight, she probably did do us a favor. But not pressing charges, that was entirely about avoiding all the bad publicity. And of course Niki Stevens will absolutely never ever ever ever, repeat ever a few more times, ever work at this studio ever again, and almost certainly not at two or three other major studios, because I've had a very quiet word around town, here and there. I don't know that her career is totally dead in Hollywood, but it might as well be. Maybe she can get a home shopping gig selling kitchen mops, or porn, or some spaghetti westerns in Europe."

"Does she know that?"

"Hell if I know. We never said anything to her, so it's a question of is she smart enough to figure it out she's blackballed in most of Hollywood. Well, correction, whether she's smart enough or not may be irrelevant, because I'd guess her management people would know, and they'd probably bail on her. I sure as hell would. Anyway, rumor is she's in rehab yet again, for what, the third or fourth time? Can't imagine what she's worried about."

"It's a mystery," Howard said.

Carmen turned to Shane. "Shakespeare in Love," Carmen said.