The Ayatollah's Money

  Chapter 27 – Laleh’s Movie

  Laleh wasn’t in the same predicament as Shimmey. She wasn’t sitting alone and lonely in her condo, pathetically entrapped in juvenile visions of a prospective lover. She sat in a chair on the stage of The Hall, next to Gwen, sipping a fine wine and creating the next phase of her life. She said, “I think I know what I want to do. If you’ll help me. I know it’s a lot to ask, but I have the feeling you’ll say, yes. You and Roger. I don’t know why I feel that, but I do.”

  Gwen looked at her and smiled. She had been right back in London, sensing that Laleh possessed inordinate intuition, which Gwen prized above all human qualities. She said, “Your intuition is correct. We'll help you, whatever it is.”

  “What’s intuition? I said I had a feeling.”

  “What you have is more than just a feeling. It’s the blend of emotion and intellect. You have a lot of it, and you should trust it.”

  Laleh looked at Gwen, parsing this comment. She said, “Well, whatever it is, I know you’ll help me. And thank you.” She paused and looked out at the 800 seats of the theater. “I don’t know how to make a movie, but I can learn, and I know it will be made here, in this place, and it will be good.” Pause. “I have an idea, and maybe we can pull it off, knowing what and how you pulled off the ballet and the rock opera. You said you didn’t know how to do those before you did them. Right?”

  Gwen nodded, and said, “But we had some very talented people help us, and we had a lot of money, and a lot of luck. A lot of money and luck, and the money wasn’t ours. The productions were funded by friends of ours, very wealthy, and someday maybe you’ll meet them.”

  Laleh was slow to answer, taking her time in expressing her plan. “Well, I have you to help me, and maybe Gale and Jinny, and maybe Shim, if I can get him out of the trance he goes into whenever we’re together. And, I have some money. A lot. I don’t know how much it takes to make a movie, but I think I have enough.”

  “What’s the movie about? It must mean something to you, to want to do this?”

  Laleh took a deep breath, stood up, and started walking around the stage, holding her wine glass in her hand. As she got more demonstrative in describing her idea, Gwen was sure some of the very expensive wine was going to slosh out of the glass and onto the floor. Pity. “I don’t know a lot about American culture, but a few years ago I watched a movie on the computer. It was called Ocean’s Twelve, and it starred George Clooney, and was directed by someone named Steven Soderberg. Do you know them?”

  Gwen knew them. She loved Clooney in Leatherheads, co-starring an actress that Roger liked, Renee Zellweger, and she also liked Ocean’s Twelve, especially the music score by David Holmes, and the interplay between Brad Pitt and Catherine Zeta-Jones. She nodded her head, yes, to Laleh’s surprising question, it coming from someone who didn’t know what a picnic was.

  “A few months ago I read a story on the computer saying Soderberg had retired from making movies, and was going to do other things, including theater. That means plays, right?” Gwen nodded. “And plays are done in small theaters, like this one. Right?” Again Gwen nodded. “So, what I want to do is to get Clooney to be in the movie, and convince Soderberg to make this movie as if it were a play, in here. That’s my idea.”

  Gwen had been rotating in her chair, following Laleh as she walked around the stage in a circle, sloshing wine out of her glass, which she didn’t seem to notice. Gwen said, “What? Run that by me again.”

  “Make a movie in here, as if it were a play. Soderberg said he wants to do plays, and doing it all in one small place will keep the costs down, and we’ll have to convince Clooney to do it, and maybe he can help us convince Soderberg to do a movie as if it were a play.

  “That’s what I thought you said.”

  “Of course, you and Roger will have to convince Clooney, but you said you did that with the famous people that were in the ballet and the rock opera. Right? You didn’t know them, but somehow you convinced them to do the two productions. Can you do that again? For me?”

  Gwen really wasn’t expecting all this when she got the call asking her to meet Laleh at The Hall, saying she had something to talk about. Gwen thought maybe it had to do with Shimmey. And now, Laleh was talking George Clooney. She asked Laleh, “How much money do you have?”