Fight the Rooster

by Nick Cole

  Pause.

  “I know what the script says.”

  Pause.

  “But I want it to be an Indian. An old one.”

  Pause.

  “Listen, all those people are names. I can tell you right now, you’re not going to find any name talent that will satisfy me. You are, in all likelihood, going to have to build a time machine, travel back to the sixties, and get me the guy who used to play the chief on F Troop.”

  Pause.

  “It was a TV show.”

  Pause.

  “No, it was a comedy.”

  Pause.

  “In the West.”

  Pause.

  “Yeah well I think a bunch of ‘real people’—who, I might add, are really just actors living on a boat and fighting for a can of soup—is a pretty stupid show.”

  Long pause.

  “I’m sorry. Please don’t cry. I didn’t know you worked on that show.”

  Pause.

  “No really, it’s not you, it’s me. I’m sorry. You’re the best. Listen… please stop crying. Listen. Please. Okay. I really need a wisdom-of-the-ages kind of Indian. You know what I mean. I think you’re going to have to go out to the reservations and find him. I really need this, and I thank you in advance, okay? Okay? Are you still crying? You’re not lying to me? I’ll feel bad if you are. Okay good. Catch ya later.”

  A sense of self-loathing descended over the Great Director like an old and familiar sweater. He shrugged it off. He was getting out of this business alive, regardless of other people’s feelings.

  Outside in the main office, Kip had just walked through the door. He wore his cleanest khaki corduroys, a Green Lantern emblem t-shirt, and a navy blue jacket. His producer costume was complete. His only attempt to look like his brother had been to put a pack of gum in his pocket. Jay always carried gum.

  “I hope you’re from Guy’s Venezuelan BBQ or”—Mindy suddenly started squealing—“ooh, ooh, are you from House of Rice, because those are the only two flyers missing from our collection. We have every restaurant within a five-mile radius in a binder, want to see it?”

  “Nope. I’m Jay Jameson!” Kip announced with a confidence no sane person would ever use while introducing themselves. Especially if they were not actually the person they introduced themselves as.

  “Oh, I am so sorry, Mr. Jameson. I didn’t recognize you. You look so much more… what’s the word… healthy than in your picture.”

  “Thanks. I try to work out at least twenty times a week.”

  Kip had never worked out once a week. Consequently he possessed no clue as to what would be an appropriate amount of “working out.”

  Other than the weight difference, Kip and Jay Jameson could at least be recognized as members of the same family—but only if both were shaved bald, stripped of any sort of identifying clothing, and Kip were made to wipe the lecherous grin off his face.

  “You’re more handsome than I ever imagined, if I may be so forward, Mr. Jameson?” ventured Mindy with sycophantic glee.

  “Please. Be forward. Move forward. Forward me a copy,” said Kip, laughing at his own wordplay. Mindy caught on quickly that some sort of joke had been made and joined in cautiously.

  “Oh, Mr. Jameson.”

  “Oh, you,” said Kip, holding out his hand palm side up.

  “Mindy,” she said bashfully. He kissed her hand, muttering something he felt sure was French, or at least he’d heard a French guy say it in a movie he’d vaguely watched while loaded.

  “Well, I guess we’d better get started,” he said officiously. “Where is my office?”

  “We gave you the biggest one. It has a beautiful view of the atrium,” Mindy bubbled.

  “Sounds like a great place to ‘sesh,’” proclaimed Kip.

  “Oh, yeah! We said that when we first moved in. We were like, ‘This room’s a great sesh room.’”

  She had no idea what “sesh” meant.

  Kip’s office had already been furnished with a large desk, a long conference table, and a couch. Other than that, it was empty.

  “Very Gordon Gecko,” appraised Kip.

  Mindy quickly misinterpreted the reference, assuming Gordon Gecko was some sort of Hollywood industry player or minimalist furniture design magnate.

  Kip went straight for the couch, which should have been Mindy’s first warning that Kip was not an executive, as an executive would have immediately gone for the desk. He sank down on the couch like a melting pad of butter withering into a heaping mound of fluffy white mashed potatoes. Then he looked up at Mindy. His normal facial expression was immediately misinterpreted as a mischievous invitation for extra-curricular activities of a sexual nature.

  No, she thought. This time I’ll play hard to get.

  “Well, I’ll let you settle in,” she said, fleeing the room and going directly to the Great Director’s office. Leaning in the door without knocking, she announced that Jay Jameson had finally arrived on site. She closed the door quickly with an enthusiastic awkwardness and the same lack of warning with which she had entered.

  So, thought the Great Director. They’ve brought in the big guns. They’re worried I’m going to sink this film.

  Which I am.

  They’ve gone to the bullpen to bring in the closer.

  He was really challenging them this time. Never had he rebelled this much. Before he had always lost. Always capitulated. Made the movie the studio wanted. Carrying away some small victory such as a particular shot or a concession to his star power in the form of an uncommonly large trailer or the always useful “I need more money.” In the end, these concessions had been bitter victories, worth nothing when added up against the dwindling resources of his health and soul. But not this time. This was the last battle. This was for all the marbles. He would beat the system and make a movie so unmarketable the studio would have no choice but to let him go.

  And go he would.

  But first he would have to defeat this Jay Jameson character.

  He mustered all his courage, braced himself, and promptly fled the office in search of a pretzel vendor.

  Pretzels helped him think.

  He ended up blocks away on Melrose at a small sidewalk hot dog stand, eating a pretzel dripping with mustard and washing it down with tart pink lemonade. He began to think.

  The first thing he would need to do would be to come up with a task so arduous that this Jay Jameson would give up, or at least think about giving up.

  His mind raged at the name of his new adversary. Finally it exploded from his lips into the open air in the form of a bitter snarl. Other customers, eating their pretzels nearby, hearing the venom with which he pronounced the name, mistook the moniker for an angered expletive.

  “What?” he thought aloud. What impossible task would make this Jay Jameson bang his head against the wall in frustration? Jay Jameson was well known in the industry as a can-do guy. A guy who could whip things into shape. If this was the case, using logic, the Great Director would need to come up with an impossible task. By definition, an impossible task is a task that is not possible and therefore cannot be accomplished. For Jay Jameson, can-do guy, dreamed the Great Director, this would mean defeat.

  “Jay Jameson!”

  Again others paused from the bliss of fresh baked pretzels, warm and salty, to wonder why the Great Director spat forth this name as he angrily chewed his pretzel. He chewed with such fury that he bit his tongue and momentarily lost the ability to think rationally. His mind roared red murder as he fought to retain composure. His only concession to the intense pain was to allow a heavy grunt to escape into the public air.

  Jay Jameson!

  There was another name that could defeat this wonder boy. Yes, he thought maliciously. There was a name in the annals of Hollywood history that would be a siren call to a man like Ja
y Jameson. Just like the call of those murderous mermaids, this name would be utterly captivating, and utterly destructive, for this Tinseltown Ulysses. No one could tame this name. This name would be a feather in the cap of anyone who brought the name back into the fold that was Hollywood.

  Alas, this name had sworn never to return.

  This name was Goreitsky the Cinematographer.

  Goreitsky had forever turned his back on Hollywood, never to capture time and light again for the masses. And here was the plan the Great Director hatched mid-chew. Set this Jay Jameson on a quest to return with the famed cinematographer Edvar Goreitsky, or admit defeat and bother the Great Director no more. Leaving him to wreck his movie in peace.

  The Great Director smiled.

  And if, by some miracle, Jay Jameson managed to lure Goreitsky to the production, his style, though beautiful, was so outdated and anachronistic that the studio would intervene and maybe even threaten to fire the Great Director if he insisted on Goreitsky’s employment.

  In which case he would insist.

  If the studio allowed him Goreitsky then they were sealing the picture’s fate. Goreitsky would, in all likelihood, be difficult to work with. A real temperamental artist type. Furthermore, Goreitsky’s style would certainly doom the look of the picture and ultimately, imagined the Great Director gleefully, his own career as a director.

  The Great Director threw the rest of his pretzel in the trash and walked back to the office, barely managing to contain the skip in his step. As he went along he inserted the name Goreitsky into popular songs of an upbeat nature.

  Upon returning to the office, the Great Director decided he would not seek Jay Jameson out. Instead he would make Jay Jameson come to him. The unsuspecting producer would then receive his impossible task. Jay Jameson would assure him it could be done. Later he would return and ask the Great Director if he had any runners-up. “No,” the Great Director would shout, and he would send Jay Jameson (another maniacal outburst of the name) out into the world again to retrieve the irretrievable. First, though, he would wait for Jay Jameson to seek him out. Then the fun could really begin.

  Hours passed, and soon the daylight waned. Jay Jameson failed to present himself in the Great Director’s office. The Great Director continued to direct episode after episode of a melodrama in which Jay Jameson repeatedly failed to return with the Great Goreitsky. The episodes became more dire and fantastic with each imagined incarnation of failure. Finally, at six o’clock, the Great Director conjured his last movie. A scene in which Jay Jameson, scabbed and beaten, returned from the ends of the earth. The frame speed of the Great Director’s mind movie slowed, running at the standard slow motion of sixteen frames per second. A shell of his former self, a sobbing Jay Jameson stood trembling as he received once more the cursed commission to seek out Goreitsky. The Great Director watched with glee as Jay Jameson fell to the floor, wailing. Then he dissolved into swirling sand. The Great Director synched the whole thing to the final triumphant moments of Carmina Burana as a choral ensemble triumphantly rang out the victorious final defeat of Jay Jameson.

  The Great Director packed his notebooks back into his leather satchel while whistling an upbeat version of his musical score and wondering why Jay Jameson had failed to present himself. It did not matter. If it was a waiting game Jay Jameson wanted, then it was a game he would get. And lose.

  The Great Director walked out into the darkened main office. Everyone was gone for the day.

  ***

  The next day, the Great Director drove himself to the office with immense anticipation. He even stopped to pick up donuts. He would want a maple bar upon completing the destruction of his new foe. He was very excited. Today would be the day. He simply could not wait to spring his trap on Jay Jameson and wondered for a brief moment if he shouldn’t just skip the waiting and do it now so he could enjoy his donut. But patience prevailed, and he dropped the donuts off at a desk and retreated to his office. He proceeded to occupy the rest of the day with anxious expectations of Jay Jameson’s imminently hoped-for arrival. He seasoned his wait with more imagined episodes of Jay Jameson’s defeat. He contrived further catastrophic forms of obliteration. Each played across the widescreen of his mind. In one, he had Jay Jameson hear the name of the Great Goreitsky and then burst into flames as he ran from the office only to throw himself out a very high window and land below in a conveniently placed vat of acid, which for a brief second had seemed like a water-filled doughboy pool. He even let Jay experience a moment of hopeful relief as he spied the approaching body of water several stories below. Alas, it was acid and he dissolved instead. After this one, the Great Director chuckled for a good ten minutes.

  Lunch passed and Jay Jameson still had not presented himself. The Great Director continued to work through scenarios for other futile tasks he could give this Jay Jameson.

  So-called can-do guy.

  He required Jay to get a location permit for the Taj Mahal. He imagined the beleaguered producer swooning in the sauna-like air from the malaria he had contracted as he staggered his way through the maze that was India’s bureaucracy of film permits. In another fantasy, he would get Jay Jameson to attempt to find a way to smash one of only two existing automatic transmission Shelby Cobras ever made into a brick wall. And not just any brick wall, but that of Maria Callas’s former townhome in France. The French would never go for it. Also, there was no way he could get the car. It was beyond priceless, and no, a kit car would not be acceptable. It was another impossible task. The Great Director laughed each time he imagined Jay Jameson asking a French public official for permission to ram a sports car, at high speed, into the opera legend’s home. They would lock him up in the “donjon” as they called it, on suspicion of being a terrorist.

  That one, he thought, would just be fun no matter what.

  Again he left the darkened office with no sign of Jay Jameson.

  The next day, after a night of fitful tossing and turning, the Great Director’s joy of destroying Jay Jameson had distinctly run its course. Now, all that was left was a final restless moment in which he waited patiently to spring his planned doom. He arrived to work, stalking into his office, and paced restlessly for a few minutes across the carpet, waiting for Jay Jameson.

  What is the deal with this guy? he thought. The average producer would have presented himself long ago, arriving with a list of demands from cast and crew, and no-can-dos for the Great Director to deal with. Jay Jameson’s refusal to follow the script was frustrating to the extreme, and at eleven o’clock, with lunch only thirty minutes away and still no sign of Jay Jameson, he flung open his door and stormed across the office toward the closed door of the famed producer.

  Who exactly does he think he is? thought the Great Director. Doesn’t he realize I’ve got a movie to wreck?

  He fumed with odorous black rage until he neared the door and heard the deep jangle of music within. He slowed, approaching the door cautiously. He looked around to see if anyone else was paying attention to the strange noises coming from behind the door, but the few people he could see in the main office seemed to pay it no heed.

  He put his hand on the door and twisted the knob. The door opened upon a darkened room from which the instrumental interlude of The Doors’ “The End” washed over the Great Director. His nostrils were immediately assaulted by patchouli and burning rubber.

  The office looked nothing like it had three days ago. The desk was gone. The conference table now occupied the center of the room, and the legs had been cut down by three feet. It now rested on three eye-spinning Persian rugs. The rugs formed a collage of burnt umber, gold stitching, and the midnight blue of the universe. Various candles, ranging from purple to neon green, flickered from every surface. Incense holders, from which sticks of the stuff dangled long trails of wispy smoke into the upper altitudes of the room, were placed strategically on surfaces never intended for such use. The couch had
been turned away from the door and moved directly in front of the large window. On this couch two figures sat, one staring out the window and the other rapidly talking, focused intently on the silent staring eyes of the other.

  “And that’s what that place is all about. It’s a giant question mark. Are you gonna pay attention to what we’re trying to show you, or are you gonna look around at your fellow man? It is my firm belief that when you exit the turnstiles, there’s an employee standing outside with a sealed book. ‘Did ya get it?’ they’ll ask everyone. And when someone finally says, ‘Yeah, I got it!’ the employee repeats a memorized script he’s been given. Asks a series of questions to determine authenticity and validity. Like, ‘All right, what’s it all about, man?’ That kinda thing.”

  “Totally,” agreed the silent starer.

  “And if you answer correctly, which no one ever does, no one ever has, then the employee opens up this secret book and reads what’s in it.”

  “What’s in it?”

  Pause.

  “No one knows, man.”

  “Whoa. That’s heavy.”

  “It blows your mind when you think about it, huh?”

  “Yeah. I mean I’ll never be able to look at Disneyland the same way again.”

  The Great Director approached the couch.

  “Hey there,” said Kip, turning away from his victim. “Wanna sesh?”

  “I’m looking for Jay Jameson,” said the Great Director, while at the same moment wondering if he had somehow wandered into a different office building altogether.

  “That’s me,” replied Kip after a short pause, remembering that he was playing the part of Jay.

  They both stared at each other.

  “I’m the director. I was just… uh … wondering… when… you were going to come see me?”

  “Oh, I thought I’d let you do your whole thing while I got to know the staff and we vibed out on some ideas for the film,” lied Kip. He’d decided on a strategy of letting people tell him what his job was. So far people had shown up in his office to get to know him and score brownie points. He, in turn, had gotten most of them stoned and then proceeded to download various deranged theories into their hapless minds. Finally they would stumble out of his office, questioning everything from their choice of career to how and why they buttered their toast the way they did.