Beauty & the Boss Read online

  Beauty and

  THE BOSS

  SAMANTHA STEVENS

  Truth is said to be stranger than fiction, especially in Hollywood. However, aside from a sprinkling of legendary and/or celebrity names, the people and events portrayed in this novel are merely facsimiles. They exist only in the author’s imagination—and in frequent nightmares.

  Published by Amalfi Books.

  www.Amalfibooks.com

  Copyright © 2019 by Amalfi Books and Samantha Stevens.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

  All Amalfi Books titles, imprints, and distributed lines are available as e-books and print on demand. For details, contact Amalfi Books at www.Amalfibooks.com.

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  Interior Design & Typesetting by Ampersand Book Interiors

  ISBN-13: 978-1-7337937-9-7

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  Printed in the United States of America.

  Books by

  Samantha Stevens

  Girl’s Knight Out

  Published by Amalfi Books.

  www.Amalfibooks.com

  “Hollywood. They take your soul, give you indigestion, ruin everything you ever create, and what do you get? Nothing but a lousy fortune.”

  —Academy Award-winning screenwriter Frances Marion

  PART ONE

  Chapter One

  “She hasn’t had her Prozac suppositories properly inserted today,” said Mitch Wood, personal assistant to Shari Draper, executive vice president of motion picture marketing at Sterling Studios.

  Mitch whispered this mercy warning to staff writer Eden Brooks, who had just been summoned to Shari’s office to review a press release that Eden had submitted for approval. Eden’s sphincter tightened. She gave an appreciative roll of her eyes to Mitch before entering the high-tech, steel-and-glass inner sanctum where Shari held court, like Torquemada at the Spanish Inquisition. Shari’s office, which reflected her rusty scalpel personality, was decorated with as much warmth as a pig-slaughtering house in Iowa. The room was more like a warehouse than a Hollywood film studio executive’s place of business: polished concrete floor, exposed infrastructure and air ducts, a wet bar, an enormous flat-screen television, video players, and workout equipment were scattered about the cavernous space.

  “Fuck you, Hutton!” Shari was quietly sniggering into the mouthpiece of the telephone headset she wore like a futuristic barrette. She gave a cursory glance to Eden, then ignored her as Eden took a seat in one of the two Mies van der Rohe chairs facing the glass table that served as Shari’s desk.

  Eden sat in silence, pretending to be oblivious to the phone conversation. Holding the pages in her hand, she reread the press release she’d just rewritten for the third time. It announced a new romantic comedy the studio would be shooting with the aging, Academy Award-winning Lothario to whom Shari was at this very moment speaking.

  Costarring would be the British actress Mare Dickerson. Mare (known in the industry as “Nightmare” Dickerson) was famous for playing buxom virgins in a series of acclaimed costume dramas set in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries for the BBC. Last year she made the fatal publicity boo-boo of letting it slip during an interview that she was having a torrid affair with the very married Australian author of the best-selling novel The French Sick Room. The screen adaptation—which Mare had begged to star in, playing the lead role of the compassionate nurse—was a box office bomb. Mare was now trying to make a comeback of sorts— away from the made-for-cable-television films about bulimic prostitutes that she’d recently been forced to accept.

  Like all hyperbolic Hollywood press releases that issue from the studios’ spin zones, Eden’s work was filled with bullshit. She knew her efforts had little journalistic merit and far less integrity. They weren’t supposed to. Monkeys could almost do the writing. It was merely a job. It paid for her apartment rent, her therapist, and the occasional bag of weed in which she indulged.

  Working for Sterling was merely a means to an end. Eden had other plans for her life and career. She was a closet novelist. Unlike everybody else in town, she did not have a screenplay being “shopped around.” She was a prose purist. She hoped it was only a matter of time before she had a book deal and could walk away from the unfulfilling and exhausting vice grip of motion-picture-studio drudgery. Until then, she intended to use Sterling as much as Sterling used her.

  Waiting for Shari’s attention, Eden scanned her latest draft, praying to god to not find a typo or dangling modifier. Not that Shari would recognize a dangling anything unless it was an engorged cock and she was sucking it.

  Draft Number 3

  FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

  Legendary Academy Award®-winning director/writer/actor Hutton Brawley and BAFTA-nominated Mare Dickerson are set to star in Sterling Studios’ new romantic comedy “Tricks of the Trade,” directed by Gus Girard from an original screenplay by Lowell Pierce and Rachel Gladstone, it was announced today (insert date), by Shari Draper, executive vice president, Marketing, Sterling Studios. Brawley will also serve as producer. The film, scheduled for summer release, will shoot on locations in Manhattan and London.

  In this modern-day folk tale, comedy and chaos collide when handsome Jarred Lange (Brawley), a quirky motion-picture writer/director but deadbeat dad, refuses a court order to surrender his beloved Central Park West penthouse apartment to his ex-wife, Erin (Dickerson), and their six ethnically mixed, adopted, children. Complications arise after Erin decides to take revenge and hires legal eagle Max Skylar (James Franco) to arbitrate. However, Erin’s less-than-virtuous past catches up with her and plays havoc with her battle for control of the multimillion-dollar residence—and the couple’s sublimated, yet undeniable, love.

  Blah, blah, blah.

  EVP Shari Draper was a stereotypical Hollywood harridan. How she got her job was anyone’s—and everyone’s—guess. There were the ubiquitous rumors that she shtupped the right Hollywood hotshots and parlayed her twat into her job at Sterling.

  She was not one of those strong, well-educated women who unfairly received the bitch epithet simply because she was successful in the almost exclusively men’s club of motion-picture studio executives. Not by a long shot. In fact, she was more of an idiot savant, a vapid woman whose fearlessness made her appear as though she knew what she was doing. Her greatest talent was that she was quick to make difficult decisions—though her judgments were often scandalously inappropriate.

  An appalling example of this was her infamous faux pas that occurred when the ACLU and a vocal contingent from the Gay and Lesbian community rallied in front of the studio’s main gate and wrote bombastic op-ed pieces in The New York Times and The Washington Post. They were decrying a particularly offensive portrayal of former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt in Sterling’s hit animated musical feature film WACS in the White House in which a cute, wiseacre rat sidekick character, who nested in the private living quarters of the chief executive’s mansion, sang overtly suggestive remarks about the legendary social pioneer’s sexual orientation. Shari was quoted in Daily Variety as saying, “Tell those pansies [in the gay community] to just swallow it, like they do everything else, and get a life!”

  A disastrous publicity fallout resulted from the embarrassment Shari caused the studio. Soon there were boycotts of Sterling’s films and water-slide parks, causing the studio’s board of directors to unanimously vote to recall millions of DVDs of the blockbuster film a
nd change the offending lyric. For the first time in her career, which had begun inauspiciously as a skateboarding mail-delivery girl at Millennium Films, Shari was reeling. Not from the adverse publicity but from the tyrannical tongue-lashing she received from Sterling Studios’ CEO Jonathan Rotenberg, a Howdy-Doody look-alike who ludicrously fancied himself heir apparent to the studio’s legendary founder and arbiter of family entertainment.

  Shari’s renown for being devious was equally legendary. She once wired herself with a tape recorder before meeting with a furious producer of mindless, explosion-filled action/adventure films. During the marathon screaming match, the short, bearded, beady-eyed producer lambasted Shari and the other Sterling marketing team, blaming them because his blow-’em-to-smithereens “event” film starring Jake Hunter—they always starred Jake Hunter—opened in fifth position its first weekend of wide release. After the meeting, Shari messengered the tape to Valerie Langston at the Hollywood Reporter, who wrote an excoriating diatribe about the director’s distended ego and vulgar language.

  Still, Shari’s duplicitous character had ingratiated her to at least one person: Cy Lupiano, the bucktoothed Napoleon who ran the film division of the studio, an infamous little dictator whom billionaire CEO Rotenberg called “Baby Boy” behind his back. Cy’s implicit backing allowed Shari to revel in the fact that she had the wherewithal to jokingly say, “Fuck you,” to Hutton and any other powerful star in the industry. Her distorted sense of self-value seemed solely based on how many people she could lacerate with her tongue. She could turn ordinarily lovely people like Sandra Bullock and Harrison Ford into cross-eyed, hyperventilating lunatics after a marketing-strategy meeting. “If you’d made a better movie, I could have gotten people into the theater,” Shari would sass without a trace of tact when they would dare impugn her marketing creativity after one of their films flopped.

  Now, as Shari continued her phone conversation—which consisted of a lot of nonverbal sounds and low-decibel snorts—she leaned back in her black leather executive desk chair. She pretended to ignore Eden, which was the exact effect she wanted to achieve: the cornered mouse cowering before a ravenous cat. Her exhibition continued with cryptic dialogue that suggested it was difficult to talk openly at the moment. Rumor around the office was that Shari was also sleeping with Hutton. It was the worst kept secret in the company that she was also working overtime with the much married—with children—studio chairman in her office at night.

  Shari’s assistant, Mitch Wood, usually stood guard at his desk during those private “dinner meetings.” One night, however, a menial from the janitorial staff, doing her trash-collecting duties, slipped by the sentinel and opened the unlocked door. The terrified Latina gasped mea culpas in Spanish as Shari, on her knees, took her lips away from the chairman’s pathetic five inches of penis, fell back on the floor, wrapping her unbuttoned blouse around her chest, and screamed like Donald Trump at a border crossing.

  Now, looking at her wristwatch and tittering in a confidential tone into the telephone, Shari leaned forward and snapped her fingers at Eden with an impatient “Gimme, gimme, and make it quick” gesture to hand over the press release for her review and approval.

  For a moment, Shari divided her attention between listening to Hutton and reading the press release. Then she raised her green eyes to Eden with a look of exasperation, picked up a black Sharpie marker, and scrawled NO! in bold block letters across the page. She tore the papers in two and flipped them back across her desk. “Hold a sec,” she said to Hutton.

  She stared at Eden. “‘Sublimate?’ Who the fuck knows what that word means! How much longer are you going to write shit like this? If you can’t do this job right, I’ll find somebody who can! And there are plenty!”

  “This is the third rewrite, Shari. I need a little more guidance,” Eden said. “What exactly do you want me to say?”

  “You’re the so-called writer. Figure it out! And I want it fast! Daily Variety closes in an hour! By the way,” she said, her voice dripping with sarcasm, “who ever told you that you could write?”

  “You did when you hired me,” Eden said softly.

  Outside Shari’s office door, Mitch couldn’t help eavesdropping. He was chuckling at the eddy of cutthroat conversation swirling in Shari’s den of iniquity. Shari picked up a half-full plastic bottle of Evian water from her desk and threw it out the door, where it crashed and then bounced off the glass-framed poster for Marie Antoinette, starring Norma Shearer. Shari’s favorite movie and star.

  Shari was still shouting at Eden. “Don’t get smart with me, you skinny-assed slut!” she sniped.

  “No! Not you, Hutton, for Christ sake!

  “The stuff you write around here stinks on ice,” she continued ranting at Eden. “That’s gotta change, missy. I’m warning you. You owe me, and the studio, your undivided attention.”

  “I’m doing the best I can, I promise.”

  “I advise you not to tangle with me sweetie.

  “No. Not you, Hutton! Outta here, you little shit. I want that press release!”

  As Eden exited to the outer office, she shot a look of misery at Mitch, who, in solidarity, blew a kiss from the palm of his hand. Mitch then took the missile of Evian and blindly pitched it back into Shari’s office. He winked at Eden as the sound of picture frames being toppled from a bookshelf merged with Shari’s voice, screaming, “Fuck you!

  “No! Not you, Hutton!”

  Sotto voce, Eden said to Mitch, “How can her throat stand the strain of all that screaming?”

  “Let’s just say her tonsils get lubed regularly.” Mitch smiled.

  “All I want is enough ‘Fuck you’ money to buy and jam those damned suppositories up her fat ass myself before I leave this dump.”

  Mitch, who, like Eden, did not suffer fools gladly (and was known to scream as loudly at Shari as Shari screamed at him), said he’d happily help but that the suppositories would be filled with plutonium. Mitch, in his own way, was a very sweet-natured man. His life was devoted to planning his weekends at clothing optional resorts in Palm Springs and luring Federal Express delivery guys into the supply room for coffee-break blowjobs.

  He smiled at Eden, batting his thick eyelashes. “You need a man to take your mind off your crappy job.”

  Eden smiled back. “Who has the time,” she said. “Plus, I’m a hopeless romantic. I can’t do quickies the way you do. I still expect to fall in love and settle down with Tom Hanks.”

  Affecting a Yiddish accent, Mitch said, “Have I got a guy for you. I know you’re not his usual type—being female and all—but he’ll cream when he sees your dimple. Now, you’re Mrs. Molloy, and I’m Dolly Levi—Barbra’s version, of course.”

  Eden did an impersonation of early Barbra: taloned fingers brushing nonexistent strands of her bouffant hair away from her face. “Just leave everything to me,” she sang.

  “Does the fact that he’s rich and used to be famous make any difference?” Mitch encouraged.

  “Oh, please! Not an actor!”

  “Not anymore. See today’s Variety? Hint: His initials are Timmy Jacks.”

  “The star of The Grass Is Always Greener?”

  “Aren’t you clever.”

  “It’s been all over the news. I’ve had his infamous video for weeks!”

  “The one where he’s caught doing naughtiness with a team of Russian dominatrices? Isn’t it fetching?”

  “I showed it to my grandmother. She loved it!” Eden thought for a moment. “Timmy ’s too scary. Plus, isn’t he gay?”

  “Gender fluid is the new bi, sweetie. Aw, come on. He certainly needs a sexy diversion about now. You fit the measurements, er requirements. At least as a beard. Truth be told he does prefer men. Young men. So you have nothing to be worried about.”

  “Why don’t you date him?” Eden asked.

  Mitch smiled coyly. “Who says I
haven’t? But you know me. I Never Do Anything Twice is my theme song.”

  Chapter Two

  To be an “old” star in Hollywood, all you have to do is not appear in a feature film, sitcom, or made-for-television movie for a couple of seasons. The public quickly forgets.

  Timmy Jacks was about to be an old star. At age thirty-five.

  Five years ago, his hit TV show, The Grass Is Always Greener, had made an overnight star of the stand-up comic from Oklahoma. On Timmy’s program, which had been an instant ratings hit, he played a goofball high school science teacher with two Neanderthal preteen sons and a perky wife who got all the best deadpan comeback lines of each script’s insipid dialogue. The lovable but ancient Sally Sunshine had been thrown into the cast as the kindly next-door neighbor, to give the show an air of geriatric dignity, elevating it slightly above typical sitcom fare of Set-up. Punch line. Setup. Punch line. Set-up. Punch line. The canned laugh track didn’t seem to irritate the millions who immediately made the show number one.

  It was after only a couple of stints at the Comedy Store on Sunset Boulevard, that Timmy had been “discovered,” and suddenly thrust to the top of the Hollywood “Hot Heap.” The very first season, Timmy won a People’s Choice Award for Favorite New Male Star and an Emmy as Best Actor in a Comedy or Variety Series.

  Timmy liked being famous. But once the television tabloid Totally Hollywood got hold of the skeleton in what Timmy thought was a hermetically sealed closet, the Middle America audience, who loved him on prime-time Sunday evenings, loathed him this Monday morning, when bold headlines in the entertainment sections of newspapers across the country all proclaimed variations on: “Ass Is Grass for Green Star!”

  Timmy’s television persona was that of the virile, all-American man, complete with nose hair, on-screen farting, and off-screen promoting of NRA ideology. In fact, he was a hick from Oklahoma who happened to have hit on a comedy gimmick that endeared him to all but the most stringent PBS watching demographics.