“Tonight. Be back in three days. Press junket.”
“Call me when you get into the city.”
The McIntellect brewed. A final concern:
“And by the way, you didn’t hear that Guido story from me. Okay? I don’t want this guy coming by and leaving a fucking horse head in my gym bag.” His voice went up in cheery farewell. “Hey. Have fun in New York, pal. Chow mein.” And he was gone.
Alan hung up, leaned back in his chair, hating Andy Singer. He tried to imagine how the self-revering little spaz would look in Tony Moore’s mouth: legs dangling from Tony’s dinky lips. Kicking helplessly, as the head and upper body disappeared down the skinny man’s throat.
Oh, yeah …
script
EXT. VIETNAMESE POW CAMP—NIGHT
a suspended bamboo cage. Inside, a MAN crouches, scarred by torture. Skin slick with heat; pain. Face down, curtained by bloodied hair.
The socketed eyes peer out, filled with rage.
Dying fires smoke.
ANOTHER ANGLE—POW CAMP - MAN
he tries to sleep. Needs water. Mosquitos vampire his skin. He moves, trapped by folded limbs; cramped cage.
A hideous aviary. We see the face now: A.E. BAREK. Gaunt. Sick. Hating this place.
HIS P.O.V.—THE CAMP
Filthy. Carved from jungle. Rimmed by other cages; fleshless faces within, waiting to die. Pigs hiss over flame. Vietnamese GUARDS jabber. Hateful glares; laughter.
We HEAR Barek’s VOICE-OVER as CAMERA roams the purgatorial nowhere.
BAREK (V.O.)
(a rasp)
… I won’t be here for long. I’ll
get out. Kill all these motherfuckers
and get out. Go back to L.A.…
RESUME-BAREK
eyes closing. Thinking about another place. Another life. A GUARD approaches. Brings a metal cup; water. Offers it. Pulls it away. Drinks half. Smiles.
GUARD
(Vietnamese accent)
… fuck you! Hey? Fuck you!
Barek glares. The guard laughs. Spits into the cup. Offers it. Walks on.
CLOSE-BAREK
trying to ignore sounds of suffering all around him. Sounds of torture; sickness. Death. A nightmare gulag. Birds high in trees, watch; scream.
BAREK (V.O.)
… I want out. I’ll get out!
He suddenly grabs the wooden bars. Shakes them. SCREAMS hatred.
BAREK
You hear me? I WANT THE FUCK OUT!
Play his toxic features and
SMASH-CUT TO:
break up
Alan leaned back in his seat, staring at New York. Skyline twinkled vacantly against black sky and Erica took his hand, afraid.
“How are you?” She was the one who hated takeoffs.
“Fine.” Alan was an unmoving silhouette, still thinking about the phone call. The way Jordan had sounded so businesslike. The way he’d joked about some new development deal Eisner and Katzenberg were anxious to make with Alan to create the “ultimate” violent sitcom. Something about a gun and a funny guy.
Alan wasn’t interested. Everybody told him working for Disney was a nightmare. Too much input. Some people hated the place so much they’d taken to calling it Mouse-schwitz.
Then, Jordan asked him if he’d heard.
“What’re you talking about, Jordan?”
He told him Franky had been found in his office, O.D.’d. A post coke scatter. The paramedics faxed him to Cedars and he was in bad shape, not responding to anything.
“But he’s still idling …” It was Jordan’s comforting postscript.
Still, the Eisner news was more important. That’s why it came first. Jordan always talked the important stuff first. Mister all-fucking-heart.
Erica studied Alan. “Hey …?”
He looked out the little swim-mask window, unwilling to turn, staring at the glittering despair below. Erica tried to comfort him, sneaking him an extra pillow and one of those absurd, paper-thin baby blankets. Any reason to get close; to have a chance.
Alan looked at her but the look fenced her out and she felt it. Something was wrong; she was sure. It was more than Franky. More than the exhaustion of doing endless promotion in the city. It had started weeks before. Alan seemed different. He looked ill; didn’t joke with her.
The flirting glances. The inside asides. Replaced by sullen quiet. When he looked at her, he didn’t.
Passengers were noticing him and his fame drifted through the jet like a pheromone. The stewardess brought matchbook covers and coasters for him to sign; requests. Alan nodded; signed.
Then, he went back to his staring. Looking at nothing, trying to get some rest; to get away from the twenty-four-karat schism that had become his life.
“Have you thought about Christmas?”
Alan looked at her.
“Do you want to go away? Maybe Vail? Saint Johns?” He wasn’t responding. “Maybe we just stay in L.A. Check into a sleazy motel. Bring Windex, stare up at ourselves?”
He wasn’t smiling.
“Erica …”
She did a Marcel Marceau face of astonishment. “He speaks.”
“I don’t want to go anywhere. I don’t want to make plans. Of any kind.” He glanced at her. Then, away.
She flipped through the big summer Mirabella issue. Said nothing. “Are we breaking up?”
He didn’t say no. She wanted to know why. He flashed back into shadowed corners of his childhood, remembering how complex and scarring things had been. Oblique vistas of family dysfunction spread, then retreated. Things which felt like long-hidden secrets. Abuses. He suddenly felt angry at everyone; betrayers. Invaders.
He looked around at sleeping passengers, realized they all looked dead. He imagined himself, like A. E. Barek, in the pilot, swimming through the crashed jet, under the ocean, moving past drowned faces; corpses held by seat belts. He tried to escape the image; couldn’t.
“I don’t know,” was all he said. “I thought we weren’t going to pressure each other.” He shut his eyes, trying not to see the sunken morgue in his mind. He struggled to speak. “We agreed in Hawaii.” He saw Camille in his mind. The cryptic sexuality that drew him. The way Erica never had, never could.
Erica spoke softly; vulnerably.
“I want to have children with you, Alan. Start a family.” A wounded secret. “I’ve been selfish my whole life … you know that. The marriages were … things.” She took his hand. “You make me want to put us first. Not myself.”
He looked at their twined fingers, wanted to get away. Close himself off. Save his energy. Protect himself and the show. Protect Barek. It was the only priority that mattered.
She took his hand, more tightly, in the dim cabin, gripping it. Knowing she was losing him. Unable to prevent it.
“Alan … I love you. I need you.”
Alan just stared out the window, thinking about his latest “Mercenary” script. He pulled out his Toshiba laptop and started working on the new episode that would include a San Salvadorian nun who was crucified on the huge wooden cross of a rural church by leftist guerillas. Alan could hardly wait to write the scene.
Erica whispered, emotionally. “Goddamn you … how can you do this to us? I feel something. I finally feel something!”
He looked over at her, awash in laptop screen-glow, feeling almost nothing as she began to weep. All he felt was something inside himself, expecting more of him. His energy, his focus. Maybe it was his own ambition.
But mostly, it was A. E. Barek.
Demanding more and more.
high concept
So, what we’re thinking, is that maybe this thing can read a person’s thoughts by say … subtle variations in heat from the, you know … the brain? And … the pulse, let’s say. Not a lie detector, as such … think more like an actual thought reader. Okay? Able to perceive and assess cognition. Naturally, as time goes on, this thing becomes very dangerous to the company it’s working in. Or maybe this thing ge
ts recruited, let’s say by law enforcement. It’s even possible the judicial system begins to incorporate these things, okay?”
Alan nodded. Okay.
“But major problems are stirred up … we’re talking a kind of Robocop, Orwellian, compromised privacy kind of world. We’re talking the elimination of the individual. A paranoid culture. What was thought to be a good invention was in fact, a nightmare. A device so Fascistic and … and … and … inhumane, it encompasses a sense of absolute evil. Which we think could be a lot of fun as a picture.”
Tony stopped his deep-voiced pitch to sip some chocolate milk. His hands moved wildly, juggling nothing, then played with shoulder-length blond hair. His Texas accent bopped like a candy-apple pick up.
“Then, BOOM … complications. This thing goes chew-off-your-asshole nuts. So far, it’s been great, been perfect, made the company lots of money, made lots of good decisions. It’s the perfect executive and everybody thinks it’s a human, and why wouldn’t they, okay?”
Alan nodded. Okay.
“I mean, they would, the way we see it. Now imagine an innocent young junior exec brought into this company, knowing nothing and this robot can read every thought. Think Costner … Keaton for the young guy. We may be able to get Keifer Sutherland … just did another picture with him. He’s very strong. We wanna make this our big summer picture, so we’ll spend if we gotta spend.”
He cleared his throat, narrowed bloodshot eyes.
“Anyway, this robot is like fucking HAL or something. It can read your mind by taking your—I don’t know, I’m not a goddamned med student—but let’s say it can read your skin temperature and when your pupils dilate if you’re lying, it’s right with you and it can analyze your breath while it’s talking to you to see if you’ve been drinking, and it can analyze your voice to see if you’re lying, and your urine to see what drugs you’re using, so it can mess with you … on and on.”
Another sip of chocolate milk. Now smoking, talking faster.
“So, this robot executive gets friendly with the new guy and they have lunch and all this shit, okay? But just when the guy isn’t expecting it, BOOM, he gets fucked up the ass. This thing is out to get him. His marriage. His health …”
Snapping fingers. Nodding. Grinning.
“It fucks him over. Breaks him down. The new guy doesn’t get it. Been doing everything right. But suddenly it’s like … no promotion, no big future. Like, ‘What’d I do wrong here, guys? I thought I was your fuckin’ guy.’ So, he tries to figure it out. Can’t. Flips out. Whatever. Marriage is wrecked. Health … thrashed. He’s taken away, demolished. And the robot executive tries to move on to the next company. But a cop stops him. That’s our Bruce Willis. Harrison Ford. Major battle. We think we’re talking a hundred-million-dollar picture. So whattya think?”
Alan roughed out notes and looked up. Tony puffed, listening, long fingers drumming.
“Well, one question.”
“Shoot.”
“Why is the robot doing this?”
“We don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“We don’t know.”
Tony’s assistant looked at Alan through square Roger McGuinn glasses. His skin was pearly and translucent and he appeared to be no more than twelve.
“We thought you might have some ideas,” said the assistant.
“Why is he doing it, Alan?” asked Tony, who was sitting on a staggering first-look deal at Columbia.
Now that Alan could see him up close, he figured Tony could weigh no more than 120 pounds, though over six feet. The guy was renowned not only for stabbing people in the back but for removing the entire spine. He hired and fired writers at whim, was obsessed with fucking young actresses and though he had a tin ear, always personally rewrote scripts to get a shared credit. He had thirty films in development, and deals at every studio.
He took calls as they spoke. His other assistant, a mute girl who took notes, looked like a clinically depressed Eskimo. She wore clunky black Soviet shoes and fifty layers of clothes, none identifiable. Her name was Melissa because all girl assistants were named Melissa.
“Well … why is he doing it?” Alan had no clue.
Jordan had told him Tony’s production company, Heavy Weight, had a fix on the project and to just go in for a meet. But these guys were missing four-fifths of the picture. He was going to kill Jordan for putting him in this position but started moving ideas around; trying to make something.
Tony stared, eating Almond Roca. He wore tight black jeans and had serious chapped lips; a Buchenwald Dwight Yoakam.
“I mean, do you like it or is it derivative crap?”
“No. I think it’s interesting.” Alan thought it was borderline.
“So, why is the robot doing it? What does the robot want?” Tony had to know.
Alan stared at him. “Well … you know … maybe it’s what the guy who built the robot wants.”
No one said anything. The boney satyr was listening. Glances were exchanged. Then, Tony stared at Alan.
“Interesting.”
“Interesting,” repeated the translucent assistant.
Alan built. “Yeah, so … I mean, let’s say this guy who built it has a compelling reason …”
“Okay. Right …” Tony peered intently, deep voice shaking the room like one of those earthquake soundtracks.
“Maybe this is a company that hurt him. Took advantage of him. So, he builds this thing to get revenge.”
“Or … is it possible … maybe he just hates all businesses and wants to exact revenge in general? He’s a guy who got passed on, lost in the shuffle,” said the creamy-faced fetus. “A kind of everyman’s Willy Loman. He, in fact, is the robot, metaphorically. Just a thought.”
Tony looked at Alan. Alan shrugged.
“Maybe. I mean, it’s possible.”
The fetus withdrew a bit. Hurt. Storing resentment that would be inflicted at a later time on someone he outranked. Like his mom.
“Go on,” said Tony, crunching Almond Roca.
“Well, I’m talking off the top of my head here, Tony.” Tony gestured he understood with frantic air shapes. “But maybe an interesting twist is that the robot isn’t the bad guy at all. Maybe another guy in the company who knows he’s going to get passed over for a promotion realizes he needs help and leases this thing for a year or so. In fact, maybe there’s some strange business you can lease these robots from. Only maybe executives aren’t the only thing available. Maybe there are assistants, too.”
“Interesting,” said Tony.
Alan nodded, going along with it. “So, you know, these assistants could just quietly come into a big company. You hire them … but your motives—”
Tony interrupted, holding up a callused palm.
“Who knows? You could be a self-serving, ambitious prick, right?” He was unsealing another pink vacuum-sealed can of Almond Roca. Vooosh. “And any executive has the right to pick his own assistant …” Tony leaned forward, biting a piece of dry lip, making blood. “Keep going. I actually like this.”
Alan kept going.
“And this assistant makes sure that everything you want, you get. She’s programmed to get the competition in the office out of the way. She’s deadly when she needs to be. Sweet the rest of the time. Everybody loves her. But she’s a fucking robot. She’s your bodyguard. She sees to it that you rise to the top and when you do … she ‘quits’ and gets leased to another person who wants what you want.”
Tony was nodding. “And it’s all done confidentially so no one knows anyone else who has one. No one can bust anyone else, right?”
Alan took a sip of Evian. “It’s not an evil executive but maybe it works, Tony.”
“… everybody needs a good assistant …” Tony was seeing the poster.
“And you make it violent if you need it violent.”
“Absolutely! Like what you’re doing on ‘The Mercenary,’ which I fucking love, by the way.” Tony had made a f
ortune with films that had vapid carnality and tons of gratuitous blood. Overseas his pictures were huge and though critics despised him, as they did Alan, he could get the biggest talents around to work with him. One picture with Tony Moore, you were white hot. There was also the hermaphrodite rumor, which added bizarre appeal.
“You know, she like … tortures the asshole in the office that’s vying for her boss’s job. He goes flying out of a skyscraper window in Manhattan like it’s a suicide … but uh-uh …” Tony was trancing out, seeing it in his mind.
“… or maybe she expresses interest in going out with this guy who is trying to hurt her boss … but she takes him home and kills him,” said the assistant. “Could get an amazing scene of her seducing and torturing him … to protect her boss and his promotion.”
Tony was nodding. “That’s good, that’s good.”
The albino child was happy again, capillaries flushing.
Melissa, the mute, tilted her dark face up and spoke. Her expression was stiff; semiterrified, desperate to contribute. She spoke quietly, like those battered wives on “Oprah.”
“Tony, this may alter the tone, but … could the assistant be a man?”
Tony let the clutch out on his steamroller. “No.”
Alan watched Melissa nod and descend back into her shoulder cave, chin tucked. Taking notes. He figured she’d resurface after a few weeks of therapy.
Casper-the-friendly-slide-of-plankton gave a smug little smile. He obviously thought she was nothing to worry about. But Alan had seen unexpected reversals too many times to count the Eskimo out, just yet. In five years, she could be running a studio and Casper would be stuck in some nowhere-fast production company, trapped in his boy’s sample-size world of arrogant cruelty. And when he came to her to pitch a film project, she’d just politely pass over and over, and there would be balance in the universe, again.
Tony’s secretary buzzed. He picked up. Listened, guzzled the rest of his chocolate milk. Hung up. Burped a little.
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