May 19, 2013
Source: Marco Walker
Thank God his office isn”t on the studio lot”because if it was, they”d have been over him like flies. The office sits, instead, on the wrong side of the Venice Beach canal. There, in this retired lifeguard’s watch house he had relocated, there was peace and quiet. There the screenplay would be written in sixteen hours, no more, no less”or not. In which case he might as well have stayed dead. Or stayed in T-J.
Then the most extraordinary piece of luck occurred. Around the time I was explaining to Mickey that, no matter how much Adderall he gave me, no matter how many iced frappuccinos…no matter what: No, I couldn”t write it for him!
No. Not even for a million dollars.
That is the sum he was offering. And it was tempting, believe you me…tempting, but for the fact that you cannot in fact slow down time. Not in any objective sense. This was how I explained it to him. I”d venture a week is the minimum required to bang out a good one”isn”t that how Schrader grafted Taxi Driver? Or Roger Avery on Killing Zoe? That one was two weeks, I”m told. Sixteen hours is simply not enough to write a script”Leonardo da Vinci couldn”t nail that deadline. And if he were around today he”d be working with James Cameron most likely, and his deadline would be, accordingly, more like seven years per film.
Mickey was indeed in breach of contract. And he was coming to terms with the idea that maybe this wasn”t going to work out after all”
When in walks his assistant, Lucy Mendes. A hottie, to boot. The kind of assistant you marry”and she makes you rich in turn. It’s happened a few times in our business should the employer be fortunate enough. They turn out to be solid marriages, too; the ones I can think of. Make you rich how? Because she’s got the brains, not just the looks. And she doesn”t have the ninety-nine pieces of baggage that war veterans of the industry like Mickey carry around.
In she walked, a pristine picture of professionalism. She didn”t blink at my three-day-stubble…at Nazario’s grim reaper tattoos, his quietly imposing/unnerving presence…at the wreck that was her boss Mickey.
“I”m not going to ask you where you”ve been because I don”t care about yesterday. I only care about tomorrow,” Lucy stated. At that we all stood up straight like a row of guilty schoolboys answering to a woman half our age but five times as capable as us combined.
Then again, maybe not. After all, we are in a different business. We are escape artists. She is a film executive. There is a difference.
Mickey opened his mouth and began a spiel he”d no doubt been working on in the truck: How to explain to his outstanding assistant exactly what his problem was. It was clear to me that she wore the trousers in this professional relationship, and it was a good thing too. Thank God for assistants.
“Lucy,” Mickey said. “I know that you know”that I know”we have a problem””
“Stop right there,” she answered. “I don”t need to hear it. I”m talking here. and I”m telling you: this is what we”re giving the studio tomorrow.” And, like a female angel Gabriel or whoever, she pulls out, from behind her back, a freshly printed, bound and minted copy of…Fantasy Island 1: The Bell Tolls.
She”d written the reboot.
A hush descended.
We were looking at $4 million.
And she”d done it well, I had no doubt; no reason to read. For market reasons the work would carry Mickey’s name of course”the girl has no representation”but he”d cut her in nicely. That much I can say of the man.
Right there and then Mickey hit his 100th life. I was only too happy to be beside him when he hit the mark. He could syndicate his life from here on in. It didn”t matter, whatever happened to him next; he”d already lived at least one episode of any fix you could dream up. And he”d come out, leaving a trail of angel dust in his wake, filling our eyes with stars…
“We need to celebrate,” he said, after a thirty-second silence. “We need to celebrate right now.”
And, for once, the man’s timing was spot-on. There was no other way to digest Lucy’s deus ex machina; no other way I could imagine for us to de-pressurize from…from just how close we”d”he”d”got to the edge.
“Let’s hit the Chateau,” he continued, his voice firming up now. Yes, I could hear him thinking. This is purpose. I know what to do now. I”ll take it from here.
“Get my wife on the line,” he said, to no one in particular.
“Call her yourself” was Lucy’s answer. OK, Mickey was thinking, I get it; this isn”t just another day at the office. With a nod of new respect to his assistant he picked up his cell phone and, after a ring, spoke into it: “Put a dress on, sweetie. The script is done.”
I heard Jennifer’s yelp of delight from three feet away. The foreclosure; the disrepute; the shame, the shame she feared was approaching their conjugal life, obliterating all light like Star Trek‘s shadow…gone. All gone.
And no….I feel emotional just writing this. I”m going to cool off the only way I know how: by reading some more of The Gulag Archipelago. You want a crazy story, read that book. The terror of the Soviets calms me down no end.
I”ll tell you about the tsunami next time. I”m Audi.
Peace,
Bombay
