Zenith of Desire: The Hollywood Incubus

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****

Bob Weinstein watched his brother for a moment before speaking. ”Harvey.”

No response.

”Forget her.”

Harvey ignored him.

Bob sighed. ”I’m serious. If someone doesn’t want to work with us, move on. There is never a shortage of desperate, beautiful women in Hollywood willing to do whatever it takes. You could easily find ten women more beautiful than her standing on Sunset Boulevard right now. We’ll just find another one for the slot! We don’t need to waste time chasing one who already thinks she’s too important.”

Harvey finally looked over. ”You don’t get it.”

Bob folded his arms. ”Then explain it.”

Harvey jabbed a finger toward him. ”She wasn’t saying no to the picture. She was saying no to me.”

That irritated him far more than losing a script.

For years people had come to him. Directors. Producers. Agents. Actors. Sooner or later they all walked through the same door.

That was how Hollywood worked. Someone always needed something. Someone always came back.

Charlize Theron wasn’t supposed to be different.

Harvey’s expression darkened. ”Find out who’s behind it. If somebody’s bidding against me...”

He smiled without humour. ”...I want a name.”

---

Twenty minutes later, the black Lincoln Town Car rolled away from the Miramax building and merged into Wilshire traffic.

Neither man spoke until the studio disappeared behind them.

Matt Damon finally broke the silence. ”I think we’re getting too close.”

Ben glanced over. ”To what?”

”To Harvey.”

Ben laughed. ”We’ve always been close.”

Matt shook his head. ”Not like this.”

He watched Los Angeles slide past outside the tinted window. ”I don’t mind working with him. I mind becoming part of the machinery.”

Ben smirked. ”That’s a dramatic way to put it.”

”You know exactly what I mean.”

Matt didn’t raise his voice. ”We write. We act. We make movies. I don’t want people calling because they think we’re arranging ’meetings’ for Harvey.”

Ben shrugged. ”And if they do?”

Matt looked at him. ”That’s a reputation you don’t shake.”

Ben leaned back comfortably. ”You’re worrying too much. This town runs on favours. You help people. They remember. You help Harvey... ...Harvey remembers.”

Matt gave a dry laugh. ”That’s exactly what worries me.”

Ben ignored it. ”You know why Harvey keeps us close?”

Matt said nothing. ”Because we’re useful. We’re young. People trust us. They answer our calls. They won’t always answer his.”

He smiled. ”That’s worth something.”

Matt looked away again. ”Until one day they stop answering ours.”

Ben waved the concern away. ”Charlize isn’t the problem. She’s one actress. There’ll be another.”

Matt was quiet for several seconds. ”I don’t think this is about Charlize.”

Ben frowned. ”What do you mean?”

Matt rubbed the bridge of his nose. ”She’s not stupid. She turned down Harvey without even taking the meeting. People don’t do that unless they already believe they’ve got something better.”

Ben frowned. ”You think another studio?”

”Maybe.”

”Maybe somebody with deeper pockets.”

Matt thought for another moment. ”Or somebody she fucks more.”

Ben let out a short laugh. ”Who?”

Matt didn’t answer immediately.

Instead he looked out at the traffic crawling toward Beverly Hills.

”She’s close with Keanu. Johnny. Nicolas. That whole crowd. the ’Viper Gang.’ They’re loyal. If one of them told her to stay away from Harvey...”

He left the sentence unfinished.

Ben slowly shook his head. ”I don’t buy it. Actors don’t protect each other. Not when money’s involved.”

Matt wasn’t so sure.

Hollywood looked united from the outside.

Inside, it was held together by loyalties, grudges, favours, old friendships, hidden debts, whispered bargains, blackmail, whispered deals, occult circles, pagan rites, buried secrets, and the quiet understanding that everyone knew something about someone else.

Sometimes those mattered more than contracts.

And Charlize Theron, despite still climbing the ladder, had managed to collect an unusually powerful circle around her.

The ”Viper Gang” wasn’t a real gang.

Hollywood simply called them that.

The nickname came from the Viper Room, Johnny Depp’s private bar on the Sunset Strip. After dark, the club became a magnet for a particular circle of stars—Depp, Nicolas Cage, Keanu Reeves, and a revolving cast of actors, musicians, and industry royalty. If you belonged there, people noticed. If you were invited upstairs, people talked.

The parties were legendary. So were the rumours.

Liquor flowed until sunrise. Hard drugs weren’t exactly difficult to find. Rock stars wandered in and out as though they owned the place. For a few years, it had been one of the industry’s most glamorous—and self-destructive—playgrounds.

Even legendary, unhinged rockstars like Keith Richards and Marilyn Manson were regulars in the VIP booths. It was a volatile crowd.

Then River Phoenix collapsed on the pavement outside.

His death hadn’t ended the parties overnight, but it had changed something. Some people drifted away. Others sobered up. The circle grew smaller, tighter, and far more protective of its own.

Matt knew Harvey had friends in that crowd.

Real friends. The kind who answered the phone at two in the morning without asking why.

Yet he still couldn’t shake the feeling that someone had quietly stepped onto the board... ...before Harvey had even realised there was other players in the game.

Ben gave a dismissive snort. ”So what? They’re actors. So are we.”

He loosened his tie and stretched across the leather seat. ”Keanu’s finally making studio pictures. Johnny disappears into clubs half the week. And Cage...” He laughed. ”Cage does whatever the hell Cage feels like doing.”

Matt turned his head. ”You really believe that?”

Ben shrugged. ”I think people build myths. Nicolas likes pretending he’s some outsider.”

Matt smiled faintly. ”Only because he can afford to.”

Ben frowned. ”What does that mean?”

”It means,” Matt said quietly, ”that when people spend twenty years pretending they don’t have a safety net... ...they usually have the biggest one in town.”

Ben rolled his eyes. ”Oh, come on.”

Matt let the silence sit for a moment. ”You know why he changed his name.”

”So people wouldn’t call him a Coppola.”

”Didn’t stop anybody.” Ben looked out the window. ”He still made it himself.”

”Did he?”

Matt wasn’t arguing.

He was thinking aloud. ”There are people in this town you don’t pick fights with. Not because they’ll punch you. Because you never know who answers the phone when they call.”

The car drifted through an intersection.

Neither of them spoke.

Finally Ben laughed. ”You’re getting paranoid.”

Matt didn’t answer.

He remembered crews. Sets. People talking after long shooting days.

The same names came up over and over.

Some people carried influence because they owned studios.

Others carried it because half the town would quietly stand beside them if things ever became ugly.

The second kind was harder to see. And usually far more dangerous.

Ben broke the silence again.

”Harvey’s probably forgotten about her already.”

”He’ll find somebody else.”

”He always does.”

Matt looked at him. ”I hope you’re right.”

Ben noticed the hesitation. ”You don’t.”

Matt exhaled slowly. ”I don’t think Harvey likes hearing no.”

Ben’s expression flattened.

Neither did he.

For a while the only sound inside the Town Car was the steady hum of the tyres.

Then Ben spoke again. ”You know what your problem is?”

Matt looked over.

”You still think we have the luxury of saying no.”

His voice had lost its swagger. It carried something older. Something worn down.

”We didn’t grow up in Beverly Hills. We weren’t anybody. We weren’t even extras. We were two broke kids from Boston writing scenes in apartments we could barely afford.”

Matt looked down at his hands.

He remembered. Cold apartments. Shared bills. Borrowed money. One script after another. Months of hearing nothing.

Ben leaned forward. ”You remember dragging *Good Will Hunting* all over town?”

”Every office. Every meeting. Every assistant promising to call us back. And nobody did.”

Matt nodded once. ”I remember. They smiled. They praised the script. They shook our hands. Then they threw it on a pile.”

Ben laughed bitterly. ”Until somebody with real weight picked it up.”

He stared through the windshield. ”People love talking about talent. They never talk about permission.”

Matt knew exactly what he meant. A screenplay could be brilliant. That wasn’t enough. Someone powerful had to decide it deserved to exist.

Ben looked back at him. ”You think Harvey owns people. I don’t. I think he opens doors.”

”And if you spend enough years standing outside those doors...” He smiled without humour. ”...you stop asking who’s holding the key.”

Matt looked away. He couldn’t argue with that. Because once upon a time, he’d reached for the same key.

Ben’s expression hardened. ”You know what I still can’t stomach?” he muttered. ”It wasn’t the producers.”

”It wasn’t the executives. It was the people standing in front of the executives.”

He let out a humourless laugh. ”The gatekeepers.”

Matt’s jaw tightened.

Ben didn’t notice. ”Every office had one. Some washed-up producer. Some lawyer. Some investor who hadn’t made a picture worth remembering in twenty years.”

”And every one of them acted like they owned the front door to Hollywood.”

He looked out the window, his reflection staring back at him. ”They made us jump through hoops just to get a script into somebody else’s hands.”

Matt’s fingers slowly curled into a fist.

”Ben.”

Ben kept talking. ”And then there were the socialites. The widows. The wealthy patrons. The women with old money and studio connections.”

His mouth twisted. ”They weren’t interested in the script. They wanted to see how badly we wanted it.”

Matt stared straight ahead. ”Enough.”

Ben ignored him. ”They’d invite us over.”

”Smile. Pour drinks. Talk about art. And by the end of the night you realised the screenplay wasn’t what they were evaluating.”

His voice had gone flat. ”They wanted obedience.”

Matt’s face drained of colour. ”Drop it.”

For a moment Ben said nothing.

Then he laughed once.

A bitter sound. ”You remember. Laurence Falk and Kevin Smith’s early backers, who made our lives absolute hell. But it was the women who broke us. Their rich, ancient mothers were the ones who really screwed us over. The ones who demanded... favors... just to get our script read by an assistant.”

Matt turned sharply. ”I said drop it.”

The driver instinctively glanced at them through the rear-view mirror before looking back at the road.

Silence settled over the car.

Neither man moved.

By now, Matt’s face had darkened, as the old, buried humiliation resurfaced.

Matt finally spoke, his voice quieter than before. ”I spent years pretending none of that happened. So did you.”

Ben rubbed his forehead. ”You think I enjoy remembering it?”

”No. I hate remembering it. But I hate forgetting even more.”

He looked across at Matt. ”Because forgetting is how people convince themselves they earned every inch of this town.”

”We didn’t.”

”We paid. In one way or another.”

Matt shut his eyes.

He remembered endless meetings. Smiles that meant nothing. Promises that disappeared overnight. Powerful people treating desperation like another currency.

Fucking those old hags just to get a foot in the door, thinking about them always made him sick.

He’d buried those memories because he had to.

Ben had buried them because they made him angry.

”We’re not those kids anymore,” Matt said quietly.

”No.”

”We’re not.” Ben nodded. ”But I promised myself something back then.”

”If I ever got close enough to power that nobody could make me crawl again...”

”I wasn’t letting go.”

Matt studied him. ”So that’s what this is.”

Ben didn’t answer immediately.

Outside, Los Angeles rolled past in flashes of glass and afternoon light.

Finally he spoke. ”You think I’m chasing Harvey. I’m chasing never having to be powerless again.”

Matt understood that.

He understood it better than he wanted to admit.

Ben leaned back into the leather seat.

”So if helping Harvey with one more favour buys us another step... I’m taking it.”

Matt rubbed a hand across his face. ”You keep saying ’one more.’”

Ben looked at him. ”That’s how everybody says it.”

Matt, clearly frustrated and cornered by his friend’s twisted logic, let out a low, defeated growl. ”Fine. Fine, I get it. Let’s deal with Charlize’s situation. I’ll help you figure out a way to get her back into Harvey’s room.”

Ben grinned and slapped Matt hard on the shoulder. ”That’s the spirit.”

Another silence filled the car.

Then Matt let out a slow breath. ”This town changes people.”

Ben smiled faintly. ”No. This town just figures out what you’re willing to trade... ...and keeps raising the price.”

Ben glanced around the LA, his smile turning crooked. ”This town’s screwed up, man. It’ll cheer for you on Friday, stab you in the back on Monday, then invite you to the after-party like nothing happened.”

****

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