'Don Simpson symbolized the kind of extravagant, excessive, larger-than-life figure who is drawn to Hollywood, one whose personal demons grow hand in hand with successes and personal fortunes.' The New York Times
YOU KNOW WHAT I LIKE TO DO AT FOUR O'CLOCK, ED?
Stefano Boscutti
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2010 by Stefano Boscutti.
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
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This is a work of fiction. While many of the characters portrayed here have counterparts in the life and times of Don Simpson, the characterizations and incidents presented are totally the products of the author's imagination.
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YOU KNOW WHAT I LIKE TO DO AT FOUR O'CLOCK, ED?
It's the biggest, whitest desk in the biggest, whitest office on the Paramount lot.
White walls with white linen easy chairs and couches. Everything gleams all the brighter because the desk is topped by a single sheet of thick white glass.
DON SIMPSON, 38, sits behind the desk, alone. He leans forward and wipes off a smudge on the cold glass with the side of his thumb. By nineteen eighty-one I was president of production. Nobody but nobody could fuck with me.
Framed business cards chronicling his rise from the bottom to the top of the Paramount executive ranks line one wall. On the wall behind his desk are white shelves neatly stacked with Mead black marble notebooks.
Simpson's smile widens.
How did I get here? Man, if I told you, you wouldn't believe me.
Look at me. I'm a complete fucking outsider. I don't even belong here. Wasn't born or bred in Beverly Hills. Wasn't the son of anyone.
You know where I come from? Alaska. Yeah, that Alaska. Who the fuck comes from Alaska?
Cold, freezing fuckhole. About the only interesting thing that ever happened in Anchorage was Mount Spurr erupting for the first time in recorded history on the day I was born.
Only place in the world with more bears than people.
Grizzly weighs in at eight hundred pounds, nine feet tall. Fast as all fuck too. Or a brown bear. Fucker is fourteen hundred pounds, eleven feet tall. Tear your face off soon as look at you.
Saw a white wolf once. I know how rare it is. No one else I knew had ever seen one. In the moonlight. By itself.
Sometimes you wouldn't see the fucking sun for days. You'd see the sundog, the circle of light around it, so you knew it must be there. But you couldn't feel it.
Then the ice and snow would finally start to break up and melt away. You'd hear it shifting and cracking. Slosh everywhere for weeks so you knew winter was over. You knew the tourist season was next.
Man, all I ever wanted to do was leave that fucking place.
Simpson looks at his reflection in the white glass.
Dragged to church every second day. Mom and dad are Baptists, Southern Baptists. They go for all that fire and brimstone shit.
We are all born evil, nasty, dirty people. Except if we hang on long enough in this life, God will give it all back to us in the next. What sort of deal is that? Who writes that shit?
The literal words of God? You're kidding me, right? You can't question the Bible, you can't give notes? I don't want to sound like a prick, but have you read it?
Not exactly a great page-turner. And you can drive a freight train through the holes in the story, the contradictions, the factual errors.
If there is a God, why would he write a book? Why wouldn't he make a movie? Seriously, you're omnipotent and you write a fucking book? Who the fuck reads books? What are you? Retarded?
Simpson turns to look over the notebooks stacked behind him.
Look, I get it. The whole baptism and rebirth thing. Death, burial, resurrection. It's a good story. I get it. I just didn't need it shoved down my throat as a kid.
The whole give-your-life-to-Jesus? That was never going to fucking happen.
A lot of those folks believed Jesus was coming back just for them. Believed with all their hearts that Jesus was coming back to this earth to literally take them back to heaven with him. Just them.
Guess that's one way you don't have to do much in this life. Because it's all coming to you in the next as long as you believe. It fucks with your brain, that's for sure.
Simpson turns back.
Nothing like pain and suffering to keep you down and under control.
But all that pain and suffering and trauma causes your soul to fragment and you fail to reach your full potential. Your beliefs hold you back.
My dad never had a cigarette or a drink his whole life. Had a huge temper, though. Kicked the shit out of me whenever he got angry.
I never saw him happy. What sort of life is that? That's no life. An unhappy life is not a life. It's a waste of fucking air.
My mom, she was a little kinder. She used to lock me in an old timber closet in the hallway when I was bad. But she loved taking me to the movies. I loved it too.
I can still remember the first movie I saw. You never forget your first movie.
Simpson smiles as the memory floods in.
I was on the edge of my seat in the front row, gazing up at the screen, amazed. I’d found my calling.
DeMille produced and directed and even did the narration. I always liked DeMille. A man's man. Sam Goldwyn, Harry Cohn. Renegades, lone wolves. My kind of guys.
"The Greatest Show On Earth" did pretty well at the box office. Fuck, who doesn't want to go to the circus? Picked up a best picture Oscar too. Everyone says it only won because so many members of the Academy were scared to vote for "High Noon." Senator McCarthy, House Committee on Un-American Activities, Hollywood blacklist and all that shit.
But the ending? Man, how could they arrest the clown? How could they arrest Jimmy Stewart for killing his wife?
I bawled my eyes out. I did. Right there in the theater, like a fucking little girl. I screamed and screamed and wouldn't leave until they changed the ending.
It was my little Rosebud moment. I’d discovered what I wanted to do with my life. If a movie could have this kind of effect on me, I wanted to do that. I wanted to be in the movies.
I lived and breathed movies and comic books when I was growing up. Hey, fuck you. I know what you're thinking -- no wonder his movies are the way they are. But I wouldn't have them any other way.
Simpson picks up a ‘Penthouse’ magazine and starts flicking through the pages.
Walking around with my cock in one hand and the Bible in the other. It was a lot of fun. Go to church five times a week, get on your knees on a concrete floor and thank God for the fact he didn't kill you that day.
But hey, there was always tomorrow.
Pastor Culley kept telling me I was having impure thoughts. Man, I didn't need him telling me what I already knew.
Simpson starts reading the review on high-end stereo equipment. (He doesn't even see the article on understanding women.)
He told me to renounce my lust. Told me if I thought about it beyond that moment, I would live in hell forever.
Damned if I do. Damned if I don't. That's when I decided to get laid.
I lost my virginity down at Chester Flats, at the black end of town. You never forget your first hooker.
Yeah, and I got to admit I ran a little wild after that, stealing cars and shit. Rebel without a cause? More like rebel without a fucking clue.
Never did figure out how to hot-wire a car. Could only ever steal cars with the keys still in the ignition.
In Anchorage, that meant stealing a lot of station wagons.
Got busted by a motorcycle cop once at the end of a dirt road in the Denali wildlife preserve.
Simpson tilts the magazine and unfolds the centerfold. Miss September is exactly his kind of woman. A striking blonde barely in her twenties. Naked, staring straight through the lens. 40-23-36.
Forced me to my knees and told me I had to do a little something for him. Said it would be real simple. Said when it was over I was going to drive out of there and either turn left or right.
I was either going to be the most fucked man in San Quentin or I was going to have a life I like.
Simpson looks over a full-page advertisement for Dewar’s White Label scotch whisky.