Not Dead Yet

unquestionable acting talent, his career had been reborn with two successful movies. Then it hit the skids after a series of drug convictions ending in a four-year spell in jail, when once again he had become a Hollywood pariah.
    Now, according to his agent, he was clean, over it, remorseful about his past, anxious to make a fresh start, and had just made a movie with George Clooney that was a slam-dunk to totally relaunch his career. Which was how Brooker Brody Productions had secured an actor with A-list history for only a couple of hundred thousand dollars above scale.
    ‘Judd,’ Brooker said, more civilly than he felt. ‘Like, we’re all waiting for you.’
    ‘Ready when you are, CB!’ Halpern said, staring back, with dilated pupils, at his own handsome, if borderline flaccid, reflection in the mirror. He reached for the joint, but before his fingers touched it, Brooker snatched it and crushed it out in the ashtray, stubbing it, snapping it, then stubbing it again for good measure.
    ‘Hey, man!’ Judd Halpern protested.
    ‘You have a problem?’
    Halpern glared at him. ‘Yeah, I have a problem.’
    ‘Yeah? Well I have a problem, too. My name isn’t CB, it’s LB. Larry Brooker .’
    ‘It was a joke!’ Halpern said. ‘ CB. Cecil B. DeMille. Right? Ready when you are, CB! ’ He frowned. ‘You don’t know it?’
    ‘If I’d wanted jokes, I’d have hired a goddamn comedian.’ Brooker pulled out his handkerchief and folded the broken joint into it. ‘I have a problem too. I suggest you take a look at your contract. The clauses on how you can be fired. Taking drugs is one of the first.’
    The actor shook his head. ‘I’m just smoking a cigarette, man. I like to roll my own.’
    ‘Yeah? And you know what? I’m the fucking pope.’
    The two men glared at each other, Halpern having a hard time focusing. Brooker tried hard to contain his rage. He had a movie to make and bring in on a tight budget, and it was getting harder every day as the schedule slipped. ‘You want to tell me your problem?’
    ‘Sure,’ Halpern slurred. He picked up the pages, scrunching them. ‘This is not what I signed up to.’
    ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘I took this role because I kinda liked the idea of King George the Fourth. He was an innovative dude. He had a great and tragic love affair with Maria Fitzherbert.’ Halpern lapsed into silence.
    Brooker waited patiently and then, as a prompt, he said, ‘Uh huh.’
    ‘I was assured the script was historically accurate.’
    ‘It is,’ Brooker said. ‘George screwed Maria for several years then dumped her. What’s your problem?’
    ‘He was twenty-eight – I’m forty-two.’
    ‘So why did you take the part?’
    ‘Because I was told Bill Nicholson was doing a rewrite, that’s why I agreed to this. He’s quality, man.’ He pointed at the script pages. ‘He didn’t write this, surely?’
    Brooke shrugged. ‘We had a bit of a problem at the last minute.’
    ‘You mean you didn’t want to pay his fees, right?’ The star pulled open a drawer, lifted out a pack of cigarettes, pulled one out and lit it. ‘The comedian who wrote these pages doesn’t seem aware that this Pavilion wasn’t even built at the time this scene was supposed to happen. That’s another problem.’
    ‘You want to know my problem?’ Larry Brooker said.
    Halpern shrugged at himself in the mirror. Then he watched himself draw on his cigarette. ‘No,’ he replied, finally, curling his lips, attempting – and failing – to blow a smoke ring.
    ‘My problem,’ Brooker said, coolly, ‘is actors. You ask an actor to walk down the street, and he turns round and he says, “Why exactly am I walking down this street?” You know what I tell him?’
    Halpern stared at him, clearly struggling to hold focus. ‘No, what do you tell him?’
    ‘I tell him, “The reason you are walking down this street, is because I’m fucking paying you to walk down this street.”’
    Judd Halpern gave him an uneasy smile.
    ‘So listen to me good, Mr Big Shot Actor. You’re trying to rebuild your busted career. That’s fine by me. For the rest of this production, when you are called, you’re going to come out of this trailer like a goddamn greyhound out of its gate, walk straight on set, and give the performance of your life. You know what will happen if you don’t?’
    Halpern looked at him a tad sheepishly. He said nothing.
    ‘You’ll be history. There won’t be a production company in the