Forgetting Jack Cooper:
The Big Idea Edition
by Elizabeth Bemis
“Hey, Mom. Ralph said you were looking for me?”
The cool blonde behind the granite desk glanced up, assessing me with her equally cool eyes, every hair perfectly in place. Her berry colored lipstick looked as if it had been just applied by a professional makeup artist, as did the rest of her cosmetics. Heather Miller’s mascara would never dare clump. And of course, there wasn’t a single sign of her most recent, extremely expensive “procedure” with the esteemed Dr. Stanley Greenup, plastic surgeon to the stars. Which would make that procedure a success, since one shouldn’t ever be able to tell that a woman has had “work” done.
She sighed when she saw me. There was no amount of work that could fix what I had going on, which suited me just fine.
I bumped my glasses up my nose, then tucked a lock of my curly hair behind my ear. Never mind that it sproinged back after a hot second. That tuck counted as an official attempt at grooming, as far as I was concerned.
My mother’s gaze rested on the offending curl for a long moment, then returned to the rest of my ensemble. “What are you wearing?” she asked.
I glanced down, frowning. Ok. I’ll admit the skirt wasn’t flattering. No one was going to take me for having the figure of a super-model, but I was perfectly within an acceptable weight, even by Hollywood standards. Still, the ruffling at the top of the black skirt, which looked insanely cute on the plastic mannequin sporting this very look when I walked into Macy’s last week, left me looking a little… chubby. I was probably too short-waisted for the blouse, or maybe I’d bought both items a size too big. I wasn’t really into form fitting clothes.
“Ruth. Really.”
“We can’t all be former Hollywood sex symbols,” I replied, more unkindly than I meant to.
It was a low blow. She hated the reminder most people still saw her as a blonde bubble-head, her signature acting role having been that of a vampy sexpot in a night-time soap opera during the eighties. Since then, she’d worked hard to become an Academy Award winning producer and studio owner and to leave her former persona behind. Unfortunately for her, the public’s memory was surprisingly long. Also, unfortunately for her, twenty-seven years of disappointing her tended to make me pricklier than I should let it.
Remorse slid through me, as usual a second too late for me to take the higher road. Then Mom cleared her throat.
“I just wanted to make sure you were ready for the meeting with Jack Cooper,” she said, her voice taking on a tone I’d learned to loathe. “This is an important film. We need to make sure we get as much publicity for this movie in advance as we can.”
So much for remorse. I left the high road in my rearview mirror and stomped on the gas.
Mom was always doing this to me. She’d been a typical stage mom during my childhood, trotting me through acting lessons, singing lessons, guitar and piano lessons, ballet, tap and contemporary dance. I think she believed that if she just cultivated the right talent, I’d become a natural performer. She finally gave up when, at age eleven, I sat down in the middle of the stage during a recital and refused to dance. Or, for that matter, do anything other than cry.
Unfortunately, while I won the battle of not becoming Heather Miller two-point-oh, from that point on, Mom kind of looked on me with disappointment and maybe a little bit of pity, the same way she was doing right now. A sudden but familiar worry flashed: that the only reason I had this job was that she didn’t think I could make it in the real world without it.
Which was crazy. I was good at my job. I wasn’t confident about a lot in my life, but I was an excellent Director of Public Relations for the studio.
“Don’t worry,” I said, my words now more professionally clipped than a prize-winning poodle. “I’m completely aware of the importance of this film. When you promoted me last year, I really thought maybe you’d finally started to see that I knew what I was doing.”
“Ruthie,” she said, reaching a long elegant hand toward me.
This was how it always went. The cut and then the Band-Aid, but it wasn’t enough anymore—it hadn’t been enough for a while. I should leave the studio and go do something else and yet…I didn’t. I kept thinking that maybe after the next movie Mom would suddenly acknowledge my worth. To the studio, and to her. I sighed. Maybe this would be the project where I’d either find her approval, or where I’d just grow a backbone and be done with it.
I shrugged. “We’re meeting Jack Cooper in the big conference room in thirty minutes. See you there.”
I turned on my heel, then nearly tripped over my own feet, ruining my exit. I didn’t turn around to see if she’d noticed.
I already know she had.
She always noticed when I screwed up.
I marched toward the conference room, taking a moment to duck into my office for my laptop and found that Ralph Blitstein, mom’s third ex-husband, business partner, and the closest thing I’d ever had to a father, had made himself at home behind my desk.
“You ready for this, kiddo?”
On the tail end of the conversation with Mom, Ralph calling me “kiddo” was a serious tactical error. Not that I would have expected him to call me “Miss Miller,” even in front of a bigwig, but “Ruth” would have been a better choice.
“I’ve got this,” I said between gritted teeth.
His eyes showed his momentary surprise at my tone, and honestly, I wanted to kick myself. Ralph also knew what it was like to be at the receiving end of Mom’s disappointment. It wasn’t his fault that I was feeling like a complete screw up.
Case in point—this entire mess of a publicity tour that I had no idea what to do about. Because from everything I’d learned about Jack Cooper, he was the most miscast human being in film history for a movie about screwing up. The guy was practically my polar opposite. He never made mistakes, he never showed up with two different colored shoes, he’d never drink his cereal straight from the bowl…and he probably never made his former step-dad crinkle his forehead at him in dismay for a snippy comment. Ralph had a nice forehead. It shouldn’t crinkle like that.
“Sorry, Ralph. It’s been a long day already.”
“Don’t worry about it, sweetheart. You’ve got a lot on your plate, but I know you’ll make it happen. You’re fantastic that way.”
The knot in my stomach eased. See, asking for forgiveness wasn’t that hard…
Annnnd Boom. I had my idea.
“So, Forgive Me is a movie about making amends,” I said, speaking fast as plans formed in my head. “The lead character, Bobby, is an alcoholic working his twelve steps and trying to get his brother, sister, parents, estranged wife and young daughter to forgive him.”
Ralph nodded. Obviously, he knew this, but he also recognized that this was a test run of my presentation.
“Jack Cooper, who’s playing Bobby, is an up and coming actor who seems to have lived a fairly charmed life. To the best of my knowledge, he doesn’t have any bad habits. He doesn’t smoke. Rarely drinks. No one reports that he’s been difficult to work with. He’s never lost his temper on set… and he’s worked on a lot of random projects with some of the most difficult actors and actresses in Hollywood, and there’ve never been any rumors of on-set friction. I’ve scoured the darkest corners of the Internet to find any dirt on him, and there’s shockingly little. Not even TMZ has found anything more interesting than a rumor of a minor B&E in high school… and his rumored co-conspirator took full responsibility for it. There have been a couple of romances that faded early, but his exes all pretty much state that he was a good time fellow, and they weren’t broken hearted when it ended. And that’s all great, but it’s also seriously boring. Everyone in the world loves a redemption story, but we gotta show people that here’s a guy who knows what it means to be redeemed.”
“So what do you have in mind?” Ralph asked, leaning forward.
“What if, in order to get into the role, he finds the people that he’s wronged in life and makes amends?”
“Good, that’s good—but how do you know he’s wronged people?”
“Ralph. He’s in his late twenties. And he’s a Hollywood soon-to-be star. No way could he have made it this far, in this business, without wronging someone. Probably a lot of someones, especially when he was younger and didn’t know how to go about it all that well.”
“Fair.” Ralph stroked his chin for a moment. “So, he goes out and redeems himself. How does this give the film publicity?”
“We record the whole thing. Make it a press event.”
“An apology tour…” He nodded as he thought it over. “That could work.”
“Exactly.” I bit my lip. “Think he’ll go for it?”
The voice behind me was every bit as silky smooth as the silver screen portrayed it. “Only if you are the one coordinating it,” Jack Cooper said as I spun around.
I literally lost my breath for a second. Jack Cooper, in addition to being the anti-me from a life choices standpoint, he was also one of the most beautiful, put-together men I’d ever seen up close and personal. And I’d worked in Hollywood for the last seven years. The only thing asymmetrical about him was his grin, which was just a tiny bit lopsided. He even had equally-deep, equally located dimples in either cheek. He also had bright blue eyes and brown hair that had enough of a tendency to curl that it made a girl want to run her fingers through it.
I felt a pure rush of something that was probably hormonal streak through my entire body. It affected my heart rate, breathing rate, blood pressure and made me tingle in places that hadn’t tingled in quite a while. I was pretty sure it’d amped my credit rating while it was at it.
Holy Moly.
That was it. I had to pull this off. I didn’t want to fall flat on my face in front of one the hottest men in Hollywood.
I shook my head. No! This job was about business. About proving my worth. To my mother and to myself. This was not about Jack Cooper, except insofar as he was the object of this publicity campaign. Jack Cooper, the movie star, needed to know who was boss here. Jack Cooper, the client, needed to do exactly what I told him.
But most importantly of all, Jack Cooper, the Hollywood Hunk of the Moment, needed to stay as far away from me as possible, because otherwise Jack Cooper, the man, might realize it had taken all of three-point-five seconds for him to steal my heart.