choice of starring roles, a fortune in the bank,
and a future virtually guaranteed to be even more spectacular.
He'd proven to everyone that Zachary Benedict could survive and prosper on the grandest of scales.
He
had nothing else to strive for, nothing left to prove, and the lack of both left him feeling strangely deflated
and empty.
Deprived of his former goals, Zack looked elsewhere for gratification. He built mansions, bought yachts, and drove race cars; he escorted beautiful women to glittering social functions, and then he took them to bed. He enjoyed their bodies and often their company, but he never took them seriously and they rarely
expected it. Zack had become a sexual trophy, sought after solely for the prestige of sleeping with him
and, in the case of actresses, coveted for the influence and connections he had. Like all the superstars
and sex symbols before him, he was also a victim of his own success: He could not step off an elevator or eat in a restaurant without being accosted by adoring fans; women shoved hotel room keys into his
hand and bribed clerks to let them into his suite.
Producers' wives invited him to their homes for weekend
parties and slipped out of their husbands' beds to climb into his.
Although he frequently availed himself of the banquet of sexual and social opportunities spread out before him, there was a part of him—his conscience or some latent streak of conventional Yankee morality—that was revolted by the promiscuity and superficiality, the junkies and sycophants and narcissists, everything that made Hollywood seem like a human sewer, a sewer that had been sanitized and deodorized to protect the public's sensibilities.
He woke up one morning and suddenly couldn't tolerate it any longer. He was tired of meaningless sex,
bored with loud parties, sick of neurotic actresses and ambitious starlets, and completely disgusted with
the life he'd been living.
He started looking for a different way to fill the void in his days, for a new challenge and a better reason to exist. Acting was no longer much challenge, so he turned his thoughts to directing instead. If he failed as a director, he'd be a very public flop, but even the risk of laying his reputation on the line had a 26
stimulating effect. The idea of directing a film, which had been hovering on the fringes of his consciousness long before that, became his new goal, and Zack pursued it with all the single-minded determination he'd devoted to achieving his others.
Empire's president, Irwin Levine, tried to talk him out
of it, he pleaded and reasoned and wheedled, but in the end he capitulated, as Zack had known he would.
The movie Levine gave him to direct was a low-budget thriller called Nightmare that had two leading roles, one for a nine-year-old child, another for a woman. For the role of the child, Empire insisted on Emily McDaniels, a former child star with Shirley Temple dimples who was almost thirteen but looked nine and was still under contract to them. Emily's career was already on the downslide; so was the career
of a glamorous blonde named Rachel Evans, who they cast in the other role. In her prior films, Rachel Evans had only minor parts, and none of them showed much acting ability.
Zack's studio had foisted both females off on him for the patently transparent reason that they wanted to teach him a lesson—that acting was his forte, not directing. The film was virtually guaranteed to barely
earn back its investment and, the studio executives hoped, simultaneously put an end to their most famous
star's desire to waste his moneymaking potential behind the cameras.
Zack had known all that, but it hadn't stopped him.
Before they went into production, he spent weeks looking at Rachel's and Emily's old films in his screening room at home, and he knew there were moments—brief moments—when Rachel Evans
actually showed some genuine talent. Moments when
Emily's "cuteness," which had faded with her
and a future virtually guaranteed to be even more spectacular.
He'd proven to everyone that Zachary Benedict could survive and prosper on the grandest of scales.
He
had nothing else to strive for, nothing left to prove, and the lack of both left him feeling strangely deflated
and empty.
Deprived of his former goals, Zack looked elsewhere for gratification. He built mansions, bought yachts, and drove race cars; he escorted beautiful women to glittering social functions, and then he took them to bed. He enjoyed their bodies and often their company, but he never took them seriously and they rarely
expected it. Zack had become a sexual trophy, sought after solely for the prestige of sleeping with him
and, in the case of actresses, coveted for the influence and connections he had. Like all the superstars
and sex symbols before him, he was also a victim of his own success: He could not step off an elevator or eat in a restaurant without being accosted by adoring fans; women shoved hotel room keys into his
hand and bribed clerks to let them into his suite.
Producers' wives invited him to their homes for weekend
parties and slipped out of their husbands' beds to climb into his.
Although he frequently availed himself of the banquet of sexual and social opportunities spread out before him, there was a part of him—his conscience or some latent streak of conventional Yankee morality—that was revolted by the promiscuity and superficiality, the junkies and sycophants and narcissists, everything that made Hollywood seem like a human sewer, a sewer that had been sanitized and deodorized to protect the public's sensibilities.
He woke up one morning and suddenly couldn't tolerate it any longer. He was tired of meaningless sex,
bored with loud parties, sick of neurotic actresses and ambitious starlets, and completely disgusted with
the life he'd been living.
He started looking for a different way to fill the void in his days, for a new challenge and a better reason to exist. Acting was no longer much challenge, so he turned his thoughts to directing instead. If he failed as a director, he'd be a very public flop, but even the risk of laying his reputation on the line had a 26
stimulating effect. The idea of directing a film, which had been hovering on the fringes of his consciousness long before that, became his new goal, and Zack pursued it with all the single-minded determination he'd devoted to achieving his others.
Empire's president, Irwin Levine, tried to talk him out
of it, he pleaded and reasoned and wheedled, but in the end he capitulated, as Zack had known he would.
The movie Levine gave him to direct was a low-budget thriller called Nightmare that had two leading roles, one for a nine-year-old child, another for a woman. For the role of the child, Empire insisted on Emily McDaniels, a former child star with Shirley Temple dimples who was almost thirteen but looked nine and was still under contract to them. Emily's career was already on the downslide; so was the career
of a glamorous blonde named Rachel Evans, who they cast in the other role. In her prior films, Rachel Evans had only minor parts, and none of them showed much acting ability.
Zack's studio had foisted both females off on him for the patently transparent reason that they wanted to teach him a lesson—that acting was his forte, not directing. The film was virtually guaranteed to barely
earn back its investment and, the studio executives hoped, simultaneously put an end to their most famous
star's desire to waste his moneymaking potential behind the cameras.
Zack had known all that, but it hadn't stopped him.
Before they went into production, he spent weeks looking at Rachel's and Emily's old films in his screening room at home, and he knew there were moments—brief moments—when Rachel Evans
actually showed some genuine talent. Moments when
Emily's "cuteness," which had faded with her
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