Not Dead Yet Read Online Free PDF

of excitement down him. Let alone the script, which was awesome!
    The damned thing had to work.
    King George IV. Gorgeous Brighton, England, locations. Sex, intrigue, scandal. This was a no-brainer. They’d negotiated with Bill Nicholson, who wrote Gladiators , to do a polish on the screenplay. Nicholson’s dialogue was smart. Everything about this project was smart. George IV lived life high on the hog, was a friend of dandy socialite Beau Brummell. He was a king who was vain but also very human. He enjoyed going to prize fights and cock fights, and was comfortable mingling with low-lifes – he was a true man of the people – at least in the script, he was.
    Suckered into an arranged marriage, George IV’s first words to his best friend, when he saw his betrothed, were, ‘For God’s sake, man, give me a glass of brandy!’
    They were already in pre-production, but the entire project was in danger of falling over for the same reason so many productions never got the crucial green light. Cast.
    Brooker entered the suite of offices on the first floor of the tired-looking low-rise block. His secretary, Courtney, was bent over the coffee machine like an Anglepoise lamp, with her skirt riding high up her slender legs, revealing her panties. It gave him an instant prick of lust despite his woes. He’d hired her because he fancied her like hell, but so far had got nowhere with her, thanks to the fact she had a hunk of a boyfriend who, like almost everyone in this town, was an actor in search of a break.
    He greeted her with a cheery, ‘Hi, babe, could murder a coffee,’ and walked through into his office, which was a large square box with a fusty smell, decorated with a full-size BP petrol pump, a pinball machine, several wilting pot plants, and framed posters of his movies. The window looked out on the parking lot.
    He slung his black Armani jacket on a chair and stood at his desk for some minutes, checking his emails and the stack of messages on Post-it notes simultaneously. He was in the Last-Chance Saloon, but what a big chance they had right now! They had theirfemale star but lacked the male lead to complement her. That was all that mattered right now, finding that man, and it was a big problem. They’d had A-lister Matt Duke all lined up and ready to sign, but two nights ago, high on coke, he’d trashed his car on Mulholland Drive and would be spending months in hospital with multiple fractures and internal injuries. Goddamn dickhead!
    Now they were in a panic to replace him. Their female lead, Gaia, had a reputation for being difficult and demanding, and a lot of people did not want to work with her. If they didn’t start shooting in three weeks they would lose Gaia’s window and have to wait another ten months for her. That was not an option; they didn’t have the cash to survive ten months.
    He sat down just as his partner, Maxim Brody, slouched into the room, reeking as ever of cigar smoke. He looked hung over and was clutching a Starbucks coffee in a container the size of a fire bucket. While Larry Brooker could pass for a decade younger than his fifty years, Brody, who was sixty-two, looked all of ten years older than that. A former lawyer, with thinning hair, watery eyes and a jowly face like a big, droopy bloodhound, he had the air of a man who perpetually carried the troubles of the world on his shoulders.
    Dressed in a pink polo shirt, baggy jeans and worn trainers, Maxim peered around suspiciously, in his usual manner, as if he didn’t trust anything or anyone, sat down on the sofa in the middle of the room, and yawned.
    ‘Tally tiring you out?’ Brooker said, unable to resist the barb.
    Brody was on his fifth wife, a twenty-two-year-old with gargantuan breasts and a brain smaller than her nipples, a wannabe actress he’d met waiting tables in a café on Sunset.
    ‘Do you think she could play George’s real wife?’
    ‘George’s real wife was a dog.’
    ‘So?’
    ‘Get real, Max.’
    ‘Just