Read More: A Q&A with Seth Freeman
Hart being blackmailed?
It was crazy, an improbable yet ironic turn of events in what had been an enviably well-managed life, a development which at first Hart saw no reason to share with the group of guys he met with twice a month to discuss “men’s” issues. They might think there was something to it.
Of course, there was something to it, to the claim of the would-be blackmailer that Hart, who averaged sex with five or six women in any given week, had slept with the girlfriend of a client. In actual fact, he had.
Not that this behavior was, strictly speaking, a professional breach of ethics for a film and television talent agent. Sleeping with a client was a breach of the professional code of ethics. Sleeping with a client’s girl friend breached some other code, albeit the one to which everyone, whatever his job happened to be, was supposed to adhere. Hart wasn’t sure most people in fact paid even that code much attention, but, inconveniently, it was the code under which the client, if he found out, might get pissed off.
Hence the potency of the threat of exposure, backed up by graphically salacious photographs – entwined bare arms, legs, breasts, butts – which could be circulated electronically, and widely, throughout the expanding digital universe, in seconds. Note for the future: keep potentially problematic sex indoors. In fact keep all sex indoors and away from ants, spiders, poison oak and sand in improbable crevices of the human anatomy, all of which Hart had, at one time or another, the misfortune to experience.
The irony here was that the viperous little ringworm who was trying to torque Hart was the presumptive protégé who had been shadowing him at the firm, who considered Hart his own personal hero, he told him, exactly because it was said that he (Hart) was supposed to be the model for one of the most aggressive and unscrupulous talent agents on that HBO series about aggressive and unscrupulous Hollywood agents. Brandon Roach was the little zit’s name. Roach, like a cockroach or the moist flakey end of a toke of weed. How perfect. In Roach’s mind, with the damaging photos in hand (it wasn’t clear whether he had taken them or had received them from somebody else) he was merely doing what he believed Hart would have done in the same position. He wasn’t asking for cash. He was simply attempting to leverage a pressure point by asking Hart to leap frog him over several other trainees at the agency, something a senior figure like Hart could easily do, and make him an actual agent before he had spent the customary amount of time paying his requisite complement of demeaning and demanding dues. And in Roach’s mind, the very use of pressure to achieve his goals demonstrated his worthiness and readiness for advancement. It galled Hart that this predator who had been listening in on his phone calls after placing them (as was the practice at agencies like Hart’s although most clients didn’t realize they were not having private conversations about the most important aspects of their professional and personal lives with their representatives), had concluded that this kind of raw venality, this crude power play, was admirably Hartian behavior. If Hart was anything, as he viewed himself, he was a hell of a lot more subtle.
“I can make this go away,” was the manner in which Roach chose to put it to Hart. These studio and agency assistant types always seemed to have learned the English language from faux-noir direct-to-video tough guy thrillers. “I just want to make sure my efforts are recognized and appreciated.”
Recognition was definitely in the cards. Appreciation, Hart thought, was something else.
Hart’s first response was to ignore the threat, to seem not to have heard or at least not to have had Roach’s demand register as something worthy of his time, certainly to appear unconcerned. This strategy was initially successful and satisfying in that it seemed to drive Roach nuts.
The two of them were intimately conjoined for most hours of the workday, either physically only a few feet apart or with Roach present on the line during all of Hart’s land-line and cell phone conversations. So Hart’s apparent indifference effectively turned the tables. It was like seeming to be unbothered by the heat on a blistering day on the tennis court while your opponent lurked in the shade of the windscreen and sucked air and despaired of your ever getting as painfully tired as he was feeling. Hart could sense Roach’s mounting frustration as the assistant’s beady eyes studied him expectantly when he arrived at work and all day long every time the door to Hart’s office opened or he emerged from the elevator or returned from the men’s room.
But Roach’s hunger was not going to be so easily denied.
After a few days of Hart’s business-as-usual serenity, he started to find, in the pile of mail on his desk, ads for the client’s next movie along with, attached to the ads by colorful plastic-coated paper clips, small images of himself entangled in flagrante in the smooth, firm arms and legs of the client’s affectionate girlfriend…
The men’s group met on a fading gray Wednesday evening, as it most often did, at Garrison’s house in Santa Monica Canyon, all the guys sitting in the still unfurnished living room on the wooden floor, eating the food Hart had picked up at an Italian restaurant which he passed on the way here from the office.
Panosian arrived first after Hart, coming directly from the marble yard where he sold high-priced decorative stone for the remodeling of kitchens and yards on the westside, his clothes, chunky arms and hair still dusted like a Christmas cookie with a light powder from the shop. He was going to have to leave early for a rendezvous with Janiece, his wife’s younger sister, the most needy, cloying and also the most sensual of the three olive-skinned, black-haired sisters all of whom Panosian was presently bedding without facing the kind of repercussions which now loomed over Hart. Panosian did have certain rules of conduct which he assiduously followed – mainly since his wife and both her sisters worked with him in the stone business – not sleeping with any of them at work. Somehow he had danced this intricate quadrangular choreography for months. His feelings of angst today came from something else, the rising trend in his PSA levels, discovered in a recent checkup. He worried that his amorous triple duty could have damaged his prostate, a concern which gave Hart pause. He had always thought that it worked the other way around, that an active sex life was a boon to the mysterious organ, a side benefit of his own life-style on which he used to compliment himself. It was definitely a flaw that they didn’t have a doctor in the group whom they could ask about these things.
Larry had shown up while Panosian was talking, slipping in quietly as usual and not saying much. He rarely spoke although he seemed to listen carefully, his features, as Hart imagined it, illuminated with expressions of disbelief and occasionally envy as he heard about the lives of men who apparently moved in much more interesting worlds. Larry had some kind of corporate job, an accountant or something. No, he was an advertising executive, that was it, working in one of those glass and steel buildings with trees in planters in the parking lot, certainly a nice enough guy.
The others trickled in, Garrison showing up last even though they were in his house. He had instructed the Guatemalan lady who cleaned for him to buy wine and to let the first guy to arrive into the house before she left. He had told her all this in passable if flawed Spanish, unnecessarily since after thirty-five years in Los Angeles, the housekeeper’s English was just fine. Garrison also tried out his French on commercial shoots with stunning foreign models. Hart knew because he used to represent Garrison before he got into talent, that is dealing with actors and actresses instead of writers and directors. He wondered if he’d be in the same predicament today if he hadn’t made that particular career move. Probably, he would.
After the pasta, pizza and salads, several bottles of wine, and a catalogue of physical afflictions, initiated by Panosian’s PSA but moving on to muscle spasms, hair loss, rising cholesterol, reflux, and needing to pee three times a night, at a lull in the conversation, Hart pulled a digitally produced photo out of his coat pocket and tossed it in the center of the room.
Garrison drew the image toward him with two fingers, turned it, studied it, slid it to Okun at his left, as he asked with a smile, “Who’s the flabby guy?”
Hart made a face at him.
“I know her,” Garrison said. “She was hanging out on the set when I shot a Diet Dr. Pepper spot with that psychopath from the medical series.”
Hart nodded.
“He’s your client?” Garrison asked. “The tough-guy actor whose only conversation with me the whole day was about his hunting knife collection?”
“That’s the guy.”
“He knows?”
“Someone is threatening to tell him.”
The others had all seen the photo by now. This information about the blackmailer completed the story.
“How much is he asking?” Panosian cut to the chase.
“He wants a promotion.”
“He works at your company?” Okun realized.
“My assistant.”
“Your own fucking assistant?” Panosian said.
“My own very fucking assistant.”
Garrison said, “Mr. Bowie knife was a handful on a one day shoot. In fact, didn’t he get arrested? Road rage in the Whole Foods parking lot or something.”
“I remember reading about that,” Mendelsohn said.
“That was our spot. We handle Diet Dr. Pepper,” Larry said softly.
“Oh, right,” Garrison said. “I remember you coming out to the set.”
Larry nodded. “We had to pull the spot because of that incident. We took a bath on it.”
“I knew I hadn’t seen it,” Garrison said, “But sometimes I never do see them.”
“You gotta short circuit this,” Okun said to Hart.
“There are people you can get to make this go away,” Panosian agreed.
“You guys sound like my assistant,” Hart said. “He talks to me like we’re in a forties movie.”
The group consensus was that Hart couldn’t negotiate with his blackmailer. You didn’t negotiate with terrorists or kidnappers or beady-eyed blackmailing assistants. But was it truly (legally) blackmail when, on the face of it, all Roach had done was come across some incriminating photos and offer to help Hart, in his own words, to make the problem go away? The only person who had clearly crossed a line, and there was graphic evidence to prove it, was Hart.
On the other hand, negotiate was what Hart knew how to do, what he did best, what he did for a living, what he did to live. As Hart saw it, pretty much everything in life came down to a negotiation of one sort or another, even sex, especially sex.
So he asked Brandon Roach to lunch. At the Grill in Beverly Hills, watering hole of the power lunch crowd.
The move immediately put Roach off balance because he didn’t know where he stood. The setting suggested that he had won. The Grill was the place you took a favored assistant to bring him along, or to announce a promotion. But Hart still hadn’t in any way reacted to Roach’s overtures, so until he actually heard the good news, he couldn’t help being nervous, hands clammy, breath tight.
As soon as they were seated, the waiter, knowing Hart and his preferences, placed his iced tea in front of him, bringing another for his guest, which Roach of course accepted whether he really wanted it or not. Hart placed his napkin on his lap, acknowledged a couple of the waves and smiles from the other tables, and leaned forward.
“I’m disappointed in you,” he told Roach.
He could see Roach pale, the bottom of his stomach drop out as he wondered if he had overreached and where he had missed the boat. But the little squirm maintained his game face. He had to, had now to keep playing this out, as Hart was about to explain to him.
“First, you took a position that you can’t back away from. There is no retreating from this, even if you were to say to me right now that you were only kidding, you can’t go back to where you were two weeks ago before you started this.”
The wheels were spinning overtime in Roach’s primitive brain. He knew Hart was right. So why was Hart telling him that he was committed, that he had to see this through?
“But more disappointing, Brandon, is that you have something to trade – and you didn’t ask for money.”
Hart could see the surprise register with Roach.
“It isn’t about money,” Roach said, knowing how not at all high minded that phrase sounded in this context.
“It’s always about money,” Hart told him.
“Well, ultimately…” Roach let the thought trail out.
“All the time,” Hart said.
“Right,” Roach agreed cautiously.
Hart didn’t reply. He allowed Roach to squirm for a while in the silence, the wall of business chatter forming an island of privacy around their table. […]
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Seth Freeman is a writer of fiction, a playwright, a writer/producer for television, a journalist, and an educator. He co-founded the Chamber Theatre in Berkeley, CA, and his plays have been presented at over three hundred theaters and festivals around the world. He created the U.S. television series Lincoln Heights, and his work in TV has been recognized with multiple Emmys, Golden Globes and numerous other honors. His articles appear in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Hill, The Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, YaleGlobal and other periodicals. In 2019 he earned a Master’s degree in Public Health, and he dedicates time to initiatives involving education, healthcare, the empowerment of women and human rights.
Read More: A Q&A with Seth Freeman