The Biggest Story in Hollywood
Bex Simon had the patience of a saint.
Sam leaned against the blue-velvet-curtain-covered wall of Tom Kessler’s home theater, eating from a paper bag of freshly popped popcorn and watching Bex give the legendary director her full wide-eyed attention as he cued up yet another clip of the Ice Crew back in the day.
Sam had lost count somewhere around the fourteenth or fifteenth “You have to see this,” but Bex’s interest showed no signs of flagging.
Despite his being arguably one of the top five most important men in this town, it hadn’t taken long for Bex and Sam to get themselves invited to visit Kessler at his Malibu mansion. All Sam had to do was ask Ramona’s agent, April Feinstein, to give him a call.
“Fuck, yes, and thank you, absolutely I will do that,” April had said. “He owes me more favors than I can count. But pin the shitgibbon down or he’ll bore you to death with stories of the bad old days.”
At least the man provided snacks to go along with his running commentary for candid video of young actors flipping off the person behind the camera while chain smoking.
“You can really get a sense of the on-set culture at that time.” He rubbed his hand over his close-trimmed silver beard, looking like a man accustomed to sharing sage thoughts.
“The process was more collaborative than it is now. I was letting the cameras roll after scenes ended, because I’d often catch live, intimate moments that gave the films texture.
Oh, you know what’s an excellent example? Take a look at this one.”
He cued up another clip as Bex widened her eyes at Sam and mouthed Help me.
Sam had to cover up her laugh with a cough.
The huge theater screen filled with a scowling Sloan Lennox wearing a leather jacket with a pair of polarized Oakleys.
Sam recognized the costume and the scenery behind him, an interior from Karma Revisited.
Macie and Chad had been the leads in that project, but this candid clip featured Juliette with Sloan.
It was the first clip Kessler had shown them with Juliette in it.
“Get off!” She was laughing, but there was pressure in her demand, which she made in response to Sloan tickling her. She gave him a hard shove. He stepped away, grinning.
“This isn’t the one I wanted,” Kessler said. “Hang on.”
But Sam wasn’t listening. Juliette had captured her attention.
“Sloan thinks tickling is funny.” Juliette spoke to someone outside the frame.
She wore an oversized blue T-shirt with a red-and-black flannel tied around her waist. Her hair was loose, big and frizzy in a way that pre-dated salon blowouts.
Her eyes were direct. Cutting. “I worry he didn’t get as much attention as he needed as a child. ”
Whoever held the camera snorted, and Sloan, still laughing, said, “Hey!”
The screen went dark. Sam stared at it, the image of Juliette still burning inside her.
She’d thought of her as delicate. A fragile, lost person. But the young woman in that clip wasn’t anything like the Juliette Draper in the movies.
Why did Hollywood have to take someone perfect and young and whole, just to turn them into something they weren’t? Juliette manifestly had a lot to offer to cinema—much more than was captured when she was acting from a script this man wrote.
Maybe she would still be alive if she could have been seen for who she was.
Sam moved off the wall. She’d run out of patience.
Kessler’s career was built on the backs of six talented young people, and one of them was dead.
Another had gone missing, possibly for reasons connected to the work she’d done for him.
If he didn’t understand that he owed Ramona a great deal more than this tedious tour of his greatest hits, Sam would explain it to him.
“Macie asked us to talk to you about Ramona,” she said.
“Colin Worth is worried sick about her. We’ve been to see Christian Stanstedt, who seems like someone no one wants to talk to.
Piper Redwood’s scared. You know Ramona hasn’t reported to work, isn’t home, isn’t anywhere. We think she’s missing involuntarily.”
The director grimaced at Sam’s blunt approach.
She thought of what Ramona’s agent had told her.
Pin the shitgibbon down. She pressed on.
“Chad and Sloan have recently resurfaced in Ramona’s orbit.
Chad made a preemptive hostile move against me, hiring a PI to follow me after I found out that he and Sloan did a guest appearance on The Howling. ”
Kessler crossed his arms protectively over his chest.
“Yep. Your body language”—Sam waved at Tom’s posture—“is where we’ve been living the past few days.
It’s not a comfortable situation that Bex and I have gotten ourselves into.
Chad’s surveillance means he knows we’re looking for Ramona, which makes him more volatile.
His appearance on Ramona’s show is vital to a comeback project he’s cooked up with Sloan.
They’re on our list to talk to once we have more of the information that too many folks are reluctant to give us. ”
Bex leaned back to catch Tom’s eye. “Any idea, for example, why agreeing to help Macie figure out where Ramona is has put us in the position of getting followed by dark sedans, kicked out of actors’ homes, and yelled at by prestige documentarians?
I don’t expect a red carpet wherever I go, but I do anticipate help when I’m looking for a missing woman. ”
“Thank you,” Sam said. “Look, we know Ramona has been grieving and processing Juliette’s death for years.
We tried to talk to Archie about his relationship with her, and he sent us to you.
Actually, every person we’ve talked to has sent us to someone else.
Surely, Tom, the buck stops somewhere. We’ve been in your viewing room for an hour.
You start a new clip every time me or Bex try to say something other than ‘That’s so interesting! ’”
Kessler wiped his hand over his mouth.
“You should know that Ramona’s parents are talking to the LAPD,” Sam added. “Whatever you can tell us that could help find her that you don’t want law enforcement to know, leak, and potentially take to court, now’s your chance.”
Kessler smoothed his hands over the sides of his silver-white hair. He wore it long, swooping over his forehead, as if in tribute to the young men he’d made famous thirty years ago. “That’s direct.”
“I hate that in Hollywood the truth is always considered too direct.” Bex folded her arms on the back of her theater seat, fully turned around to face them now.
“I want all the time back I’ve spent couching everything I’ve ever said in euphemisms. It’s not as if we don’t know that everyone in this business has an opinion.
” She held out her empty popcorn bag to Kessler. “Or a secret.”
He took the bag and stood up to toss it in a discreet mahogany wastebasket. There was a white ring around his mouth. He was probably angry.
Sam didn’t care. There were a lot of naked emperors in Hollywood, and someone had to point their finger.
“Cineline mothballed the documentary,” he said.
“We know that,” Bex said. “Everyone knows that who still remembers there was supposed to be a documentary. They killed it after Juliette’s death.”
Now Kessler leaned back against the wall. “Do you know why?”
“Out of respect for Juliette?” Bex’s confusion was evident on her forehead. “But, as I say that out loud, I’m surprised I believed it.”
“They put it away after they’d spent more on fighting Chad’s lawsuits to stop the release than they’d spent on the documentary or could ever hope to make from it.”
“For fuck’s sake.” Sam shoved her hands into her hair.
“A few months ago, Archie told me he wanted to buy the rights back from Cineline, but they wouldn’t sell to him. I offered to produce it. And by ‘offered,’ you understand that I’m saying I cashed in a chip with the studio head, Niels Shaughnessy.”
Emotional debt really was the most important currency in show business. “We’re following,” Sam said.
“My involvement gave Archie the opportunity to step back into the project and assume creative control. Chad’s career is big enough now that Chad has to be a lot more careful about his litigious behavior.
He cowered behind the cover of respect for Juliette’s death the first time, but another lawsuit would make him look like he’s trying to hide something. You know how it is.”
Sam didn’t. She was not inclined to sic lawyers on people to cover up anything she’d done. “Is Chad trying to hide something? Is there something in the documentary he’s trying to suppress?”
Kessler scanned around the theater like he was looking for someone more interesting to talk to at a party. “Why don’t we go outside? Change of scenery.”
“We will go outside with you and give you five more minutes, as a courtesy, so that you may master your feelings and tell the truth,” Sam said. “But if it takes you longer than five minutes, I will be so direct.”
This was the beginning and end of any threat Sam could make, but Tom did go a little pale. He motioned for them to follow him from the room.
Bex and Sam walked behind him down the whitewashed, wood-paneled halls of his home. The ceilings soared above them. Every surface seemed designed to softly reflect light. It was effective even on this gray day. Money could buy the weather.
On Kessler’s deck, Malibu’s collage of jagged rocks and smooth beaches were filmed in a fog so heavy, it almost seemed like another round of rain had begun, though Sam didn’t feel even a sprinkle.
Multiple outdoor heaters ringed a covered seating area.
The deck, made from blond woods and glass, had an uninterrupted panoramic view of the Pacific.
It was surreal, and so warm that Sam slipped off her cardigan while the unseasonal storm swirled around them.