Ivan had written every one of Igor's blockbuster films;
he was used to writing alone but had been saddled
by the studio   w/ a personal assistant who was ever
up his *** about the most trivial, mundane ****;   he
pretended to know no English w/ her which forced her to
try out her garbled,      |  broken Russian,  which sounded
like she was giving head w/ a mouthful of marbles;
Ivan should only be so lucky;   the blonde ponytail
was at the glass door peeking in suspiciously;   he had
an office overlooking Ventura Boulevard that smelled
like the pollution outside; 'Da?' he said by rote,
wanting to hear nothing she said;   she took her earphones
off & came closer;   Patti had a crush on her slinky Rusky 'boss'
as she liked to think of him in her KGB & James Bond inspired fantasies;
Ivan's madness showing through his genius when she sat
     up watching bootleg Blu-rays of Igor's films all night long,
                    paying especial attention to the Russian dialogue,
which was meager at best & mostly incoherent.       Ivan was
staring into the girl's mooning blue-eyes, as she snapped
out of her daze she began prattling off his supposed schedule
for the day;  'u kid me, right? TV show?; a game show?'
'No, silly,' she grinned, 'a talk show; Late, Late Night w/ ...'
'Forget it,' he said flatly: 'send one of the girls;'  he'd insist,
meaning the two stars of most of their pictures,   although
     Hel had gone back to part-time circus performing on
Broadway,  making a bundle doing tricks she learned in
childhood while showing off more or less the same skin
  she wagged in underground dives from Siberia to Kiev,
staking her claim to fortune alongside TT the tgirl,        who was
now a popular regular at any number of high-end hipster venues;                
                      the artsy scene mostly  
                      centered around the semi-expat, Mennonite apostate
American action painter Eli Simple;                       Eli more or less
permanently ensconcing himself    |  in a chateau in the mountains
of Monaco; his name was mud in America as a celebrity;
Eli wasn't even sure why --            but his name had been
prominently mentioned in one of the more widely read
Saturday night ****** rags;        as at one time he was thought to have killed
the unnamed actress' father in cold blood,  
[a crime she later confessed to in the media,
dampening any chance of a fair trail & the slender, 
vamping 'sad little bad girl' was acquitted            | all                         while
                 Eli was
out of the country & in Russia at the time;
                       harassed as a newly minted
                       Hollywood star by the cold-blooded paparazzo
        for his
        Oscar Nominated turn as Robert Motherwell in the independently produced biopic of the same name;            Igor's first International Hit,
Ivan winning for best screenplay; Patti not having said anything worth hearing,
                                Ivan stopped pretending to listen

Igor's direction of the small art film A Star Is ****
getting him noticed in Hollywood; Eli initially
wanting nothing to do w/ the film, the unnamed
actress starring unbilled & unpaid, all for Eli;
Hel's part greatly expanded, she talked Eli into
letting his painting be used as the backdrop;
filling the screen w/ its inky swirls during
the opening & closing credits; completely
      forgetting to include *******,
Igor woke up to the incessant buzzing
    of his Chinese brand smartphone blowing up;
the woman was French; Igor's French was rusty,
"Nous aimerions que vous apportiez
votre film en France," she said;   "Pour concourir
pour la Palme d'Or. "Da, da,"  he replied groggily;
the girls had gone out shopping w/ Eli's gold card;
Eli couldn't get far enough away
& would pay any price for them
to keep their distance; [the big-tittied dwarf, skinny pouty tgirl
& infamous American actress attracting social media attention];
"The medium is the message? I don't understand," she said;
"**** u," he said; "Don't give me that, what is paint?
What is wood? What is canvas?"     he was shouting;
"Oh, I don't know," she simpered, "What is paint & wood & canvas?"
she was cringing now, on her stocking knees
& crying, trying not to whine,    she couldn't help herself,
                   red mouth open
                   blubbering & drooling,
                   small eyes shut behind horn-rimmed glasses;
he walked away from her,
                   & never turning back, left the room;
he'd been drinking all morning
& they had had knockdown *** the moment she walked in; "Art critics," he thought, resentfully, "They're all the same"