Eight
JEREMY WAS ABSOLUTELY correct in calling Jason’s publicist the busiest man in show business. Marty Shepherd, cofounder of the Shepherd/Grillstein Company—the top publicity firm in Los Angeles—could not recall the last time he had slept more than four hours in a row.
Being the eyes, ears, and voice of most of the film industry’s top acting talent was no easy feat. Not that he had any problem representing directors or writers, but no one ever cared what they did. Ron Howard or M. Night Shyamalan could snort cocaine off the ass of the script girl in the middle of an on-set orgy, and that still would be less gossip-worthy than whether Jennifer Lopez wore her wedding band while eating lunch at the Polo Lounge.
For a de minimis 5 percent of all gross earnings, Marty’s responsibilities could be boiled down to one pithy mantra that every associate in his firm was expected to eat, sleep, and die by: make sure your client is someone whose f*ckups are newsworthy, and f*ck anyone that makes up news about your client.
It was the second half of Marty’s mantra that kept him in the office so late on this particular Friday evening. Rebecca, an associate whose only assignment was to assist Marty in the various issues that arose with one particularly challenging client, had just stopped by his office.
“We’ve gotten calls fromUs Weekly ,In Touch , andStar . They want to know what Jason Andrews was doing in an office building downtown,” Rebecca reported. “They claim he was with a woman, although she apparently slipped off before anyone snapped her picture.”
For a brief moment, Marty wondered how the woman—who he assumed was this Taylor Donovan person Jason insisted on working with—managed to get out of the building without being photographed. Not an easy feat when traveling with Jason Andrews.
“Tell them he was getting cash from the ATM”—Marty almost laughed at the idea himself—“and that the woman was a building employee who stopped him for an autograph.” With those instructions, Rebecca nodded and left.
And then for the next half hour, Marty sat alone in his office and contemplated just how big of a problem Taylor Donovan was going to be.
It went without saying that Jason Andrews was his top client. In fact, Jason Andrews was the top, period. The biggest name in Hollywood—a status he had held for a long, long time.
Which was precisely what worried Marty, who got paid to worry when no one else did.
God knows it wasn’t easy to get to the top. But staying there was even tougher. Jason had that rare kind of star quality that came around only once a generation: women loved him, and men wanted to be him.Rolling Stone magazine had hit the proverbial nail on the head: his quick wit and easy charm did indeed call to mind Cary Grant or Clark Gable. But there was something about Jason that was just that little bit more down to earth than the icons of the classic films. Marty had never been able to figure out exactly what that “something” was, although he secretly suspected it had something to do with the fact that Jason was from Missouri.
Unfortunately, Hollywood—like many of its inhabitants—had a wandering eye. There was nothing the town liked more than the “new face,” or discovering the next person who everyone would hail as “up-and-coming.”
And after sixteen years in the business, being an undisclosed “thirtysomething” years old, Jason Andrews was neither of those things.
Luckily, the end was nowhere in sight. Jason’s next movie,Inferno , would be released in just a few weeks and had been predicted to be the blockbuster of the summer. He would follow that tent-pole pic with the legal thriller he was about to begin filming for Paramount, a film for which Marty had high hopes of a third Oscar nomination.
In Marty’s mind, therefore, the only thing Jason needed to do was to keep doing everythingexactly as he had for the past sixteen years. Which—from a publicity standpoint—meant wining and dining only the most famous of actresses, supermodels, pop stars, and the occasional billionaire heiress.
Taylor Donovan, however, was none of those things. As far as Marty was concerned, in terms of media exposure, the only thing worse than dating nobody was datinga nobody.
WithInferno about to be released, the public was ready for another full-fledged Jason Andrews romance. And Marty Shepherd—publicist to the stars and eighth most powerful person in Hollywood (once talent and studio heads were excluded)—was determined to give them one.
With these thoughts in mind, Marty picked up the copy ofPeople magazine that Rebecca had handed him earlier that week. He flipped through “The Women of Jason Andrews!” article until he came to the last picture of Jason and the actress who’d been cast as the female lead in the legal thriller—Naomi Cross.
Marty smiled, thinking how nice Naomi looked standing next to Jason. She was an ingénue and a media darling. Even better, she was British, which meant double the UK and European exposure.
Yes, Marty mused to himself, Naomi Cross was just the answer he’d been looking for.
WAY ACROSS TOWN, in a recently purchased five-bedroom home nestled in the heart of the Hollywood Hills, someone else was looking at that very same picture of Jason Andrews and Naomi Cross.
But unlike Marty, Scott Casey was not smiling.
In fact, he was pretty damn pissed off.
His publicist had promised thathe was going to be on the cover of that very issue ofPeople , not Jason Andrews. Again.
The story—or so his publicist had said—was supposed to focus on Scott’s move from Sydney, Australia, to Los Angeles. How he had made the decision, given his recent film success, to live full time in the States.
Scott doubted there were few people in America who didn’t already know his story (not that he minded it being told over and over again inGQ ,Vanity Fair ,Esquire , andMovieline ). The interviews all focused on the same basic facts: he had shot to fame little more than thirteen months ago after costarring in the epic fantasy-adventure,A Viking’s Quest . Women had gone absolutely mad for the character he played in the film. In fact, during the five months the movie ran worldwide in theaters, his name was Googled more than any other search term.
It was nothing that Scott, nor any of the people working with him during the production ofA Viking’s Quest , had foreseen. In fact, Scott had had to fight just to audition for the role. His look was too “pretty boy” to play a Viking, the director had originally said. But his agent cajoled, pleaded, pulled strings, and got Scott the audition, which eventually led to a screen test. After much deliberation, the director and producers decided that Scott’s picture-perfect handsome face was an interesting contrast to the lead actor’s rugged, unkempt look. And to match his lean appearance, they gave Scott’s character a kick-ass bow and arrow to fight with instead of a clunky sword.
It worked. Boy, did it ever work. On screen, he was fierce and feral—yet somehow graceful at the same time. And when the camera zoomed in and held longingly on his soulful hazel eyes—his blond hair ruffling in the wind—no woman in the audience could help but be breathlessly glued to every frame.
A star was born.
After the release of the film, Scott was immediately labeled Hollywood’s “It Guy” and offered a wealth of the best parts in town. Seizing the day, he went after a role he had dreamed of playing since his high school Contemporary Lit class: the lead in the film adaptation of the novelOutback Nights .
Although it was one of the most sought-after parts in Hollywood, Scott believed himself to be a shoo-in. Notwithstanding the fact that he had launched onto the industry’s A-list virtually overnight, he had the added benefit of actually being Australian. So he went to lunch with the producers and even sacrificed an entire Saturday night of clubbing with his friends to have dinner with the film’s director at his ranch in Santa Barbara. Two days later, his agent called with the big news.
They had offered him the f*ckingsupporting role.
The part of the sidekick, the friend who dies violently on page eighty-eight of the script, whose death spurs the protagonist—thelead actor—to face his adversaries and demons, save the town, and get the girl in the climatic third act.
A lead role that had been offered to Jason Andrews.
The studio had apparently gotten a copy of the script to him last minute, and Jason was interested. It was an unbelievable coup, the producers said, certain that Scott would understand. They simply couldn’t pass on a chance to land Jason Andrews. No one did.
Amidst a string of Aussie-flavored profanities, Scott told his agent in no uncertain terms that he wasdone playing supporting parts (unless of the indie, Oscar-garnering type, of course). And he certainly was no sidekick to Jason Andrews. Then he angrily took off to Cabo San Lucas to fume in a twenty-five-hundred-dollar-a-night bungalow.
It was on the second day of his trip, as he was halfway through his fourth Corona of the afternoon and getting a poolside blowjob from Chandra, a reality television “actress” who happened to be staying at the same resort, when his agent called again.
The studio’s negotiations with Jason Andrews had come to a halt over a salary dispute. They wanted Scott for the lead role.
Scott accepted, but not until after the producers, the director, his agent, and the studio had all sufficiently pacified his ego. He resented being second choice for a role that should have been his from the start. And so he resolved that he would prove something to the producers, the director, his agent, the studio, and anyone else who doubted him.
Jason Andrews was nothing special.
The time had come for the king’s reign to end.
It was a vow that Scott repeated that very Friday evening, as he flipped through the pages ofPeople magazine. He sat poolside again, but this time by his own swimming pool in the new house he had purchased with the money he had earned fromA Viking’s Quest . After finishing the 500 laps his personal trainer ordered, Scott had turned to the weekly gossip magazines his assistant dropped off every Friday morning.
Feeling a cool evening breeze cutting across the Hollywood Hills, Scott pulled on the Von Dutch T-shirt he’d left on the lounge chair. His pool overlooked an amazing view of downtown Los Angeles that should have captured his attention. But the picture of Jason Andrews sitting on the chair next to him sullied the sight on that particular evening.
Scott ripped the picture of Jason out of the magazine and crumpled it into a ball. Then he pitched it into the garbage can sitting on the edge of the deck.
This cover story would be the last thing he lost to Jason Andrews, Scott vowed. Next time, it would beJason who wanted something. Something important.
And he would be there to make sure Jason didn’t get it.