Hollywood Hack Job

by Nathan Allen

  “I’m sure that as an artist yourself y-you can appreciate how difficult it can be–”

  The door closed before Eric could say any more. He felt the wind brush against his face as it slammed shut.

  He briefly contemplated ringing the doorbell again and making a second attempt. This guy looked like he might enjoy the films of Michael Bay. Perhaps Eric could exploit that angle to sway him. But in the end, he decided it wasn’t worth the effort. He slowly wandered back to the house.

  The drumming resumed moments after he walked through the front door.

  “So, did he see to reason?” Cameron said. He was stretched out on the sofa, flicking through that week’s issue of Variety.

  “Maybe we should wait until he’s finished,” Eric said.

  “Good idea.” Cameron tossed the magazine on the coffee table. “I wonder why we didn’t think of that earlier?”

  Eric grabbed a banana from the fruit bowl. “I’m sure he won’t be at it for too much longer.”

  The two of them sat and waited as the noise continued for five straight hours.

  Chapter 17

  Eric focused all his energy on controlling his rising nausea as he sat in the bowels of Michael Bay’s $80 million luxury yacht. He wasn’t sure why Michael insisted they meet here; nor did he know why he and Cameron had spent the entire journey thus far in the boat’s onboard cinema, watching test footage from the forthcoming Transformers: Echoes of Bedlam, rather than enjoying the sunshine and ocean view up on the deck. But here they were, sitting in front of the giant screen alongside the two dozen studio suits variously credited as the film’s co-producers, executive producers, co-executive producers, associate producers and supervising producers.

  On the screen, the film’s heroine delivered a withering put-down to her now-sentient Dodge Challenger as they both narrowly avoided annihilation. One of the suits cackled out loud.

  “She’s hilarious, isn’t she?” he said, slapping his knee and elbowing Eric in the ribs.

  “Who?” Eric said, struggling to keep his breakfast in place.

  “Emily Ratajkowski! I mean, I knew she was hot. But I had no idea she was so funny!”

  “I think the people who came up with those jokes are funny,” Cameron said. “She’s only reciting lines as they have been written for her.”

  A booming explosion drowned out Cameron’s comment. The suit jumped to his feet and punched the air as an evil Decepticon was obliterated in spectacular fashion. “Yeah!” he shouted. He high-fived his ponytailed colleague, and the two of them commenced a “U-S-A!” chant.

  The door opened, and Michael Bay’s assistant Liliya entered. “Michael will see you both now,” she said.

  Cameron and Eric followed Liliya down a narrow corridor. Neither one could say they were disappointed to leave the screening room before the film’s conclusion.

  Liliya led them to Michael’s office, a room almost as big as the one he had on dry land. Michael greeted them like old friends, and they settled into the plush leather sofa opposite his desk.

  “So, what did you think of the Echoes of Bedlam footage?” he said.

  “It was ... impressive,” Cameron said.

  Michael grinned and nodded, but looked like he was waiting for Cameron to elaborate.

  “The effects were awesome,” he continued, mustering all the enthusiasm he could. “The explosions look really cool.”

  “I should hope so,” Michael said with a knowing wink. “The budget for this one is over $300 million.”

  His attention then turned to Eric.

  “Oh, uh ... I liked Emily Ratajkowski,” Eric offered. “She’s hilarious.”

  “Isn’t she?” Michael beamed. “We all knew she was hot, but who knew she could be so funny as well?”

  He leaned back in his chair and chuckled at a joke, one that Cameron and Eric were apparently not privy to.

  “So, Michael,” Cameron said. “Our second draft. Have you had a chance to read it yet?”

  “Ah, yes. Just one moment.” He sifted through the pile of documents on his desk until he located their script. “First, the bad news. The bad news is that your screenplay is awful. Terrible. One of the worst things I’ve ever had the misfortune to read. And that’s coming from the guy who greenlit Ouija.”

  Cameron and Eric felt themselves deflate like a punctured tire. This was the last thing they wanted or expected to hear.

  “So ... where exactly did we go wrong this time?” Eric said.

  “The question should be where didn’t you go wrong. For a start, this is quite possibly the most unoriginal piece of writing I have ever come across. It’s a one hundred and eighteen page cliché, completely lacking in creativity and imagination. The plot is about as predictable as a Zimbabwean election result. To be honest, it looks like you’ve just copied a bunch of scenes from other scripts and pasted them into this one file.”

  “But that’s exactly what you said you wanted!” Cameron said with more than a hint of exasperation. “We gave you something original and you rejected it. You said it needed to be more like the other horror films out there.”

  “Yes, I wanted it to be more like the other horror films out there. The problem is, this reads like every other horror film out there. What you’ve written is something we’ve already seen a million times over. There are so many hackneyed horror tropes in this you may as well give it to the Wayans brothers and have them turn it into one of those stupid parody films.”

  The disappointment was written across the two writers’ faces. This wasn’t easy for them to hear. Both had been high achievers for most of their lives, in addition to being members of the Excessive Praise and Participation Award Generation. Failure and criticism were two things they had largely managed to avoid up until now.

  “So what’s the good news?” Eric said.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “You began your critique with, ‘First, the bad news’. That implies good news to follow.”

  “Ah, yes, of course.” Michael quickly ran his eyes across a few of the pages. “Well, it is properly formatted. Presentation is always important. It’s an easy read. You make great use of white space. And your spelling and grammar is exceptional throughout. You wouldn’t believe the amount of scripts I read from writers who have no idea what they’re supposed to do with an apostrophe.”

  “Look, Michael.” The yacht crashed into a wave at the exact moment Cameron went to stand. His legs faltered, and he collapsed back into the sofa. “You knew from the start that horror wasn’t really our thing. Between the two of us, Eric and I had watched maybe ten horror films before we agreed to take on this assignment. And if I’m being brutally honest here, I didn’t really care for any of them. I think most of them are cheap, nasty, exploitative trash, written by people who have no business calling themselves writers–”

  Eric quickly interrupted. “Cameron and I have always been more comfortable writing what I guess you would call, quote, serious fare. Historical dramas, social reality examinations, that sort of thing. This is a little outside our wheelhouse.”

  “Well I hate to be the prick to burst your bubble, but if you guys want to work in Hollywood you’ll need to make it part of your wheelhouse,” Michael said, poking at the Mark Wahlberg bobble-head on his desk with a pen. “You’ll be expected to handle all sorts of genres, and you won’t always have the chance to write what appeals to you personally. Look at me – I didn’t set out to be the director of incredibly awesome action films. I actually wanted to direct musicals, believe it or not. But then the opportunity to do Bad Boys came along and, well, eight and a half billion dollars of pure Bayhem later, here we are.”

  Cameron let out a long sigh. “I’m just not sure we can be who you want us to be,” he said. “Maybe it’s best if we cut our losses now and walked away. Let someone who knows what they’re doing take the reigns.”

  This proposal was met with a vacuum of silence.

  “I would strongly advise against that,” Michael s
aid. “You guys are just starting out. If you bail on this now you’re only going to annoy a lot of powerful people, and neither one of you has the credits in the bank to be able to do that. This town is a lot smaller than you may realize, and reputations count for everything.”

  Cameron and Eric both looked at their feet. The feeling of dejection and shame, in addition to their ever-increasing seasickness, was overwhelming. Michael could sense their despair.

  “Look, I know you’re not horror geeks. But that’s why you were hired in the first place – so you could come up with something completely different. Something that announces ‘Written by Cameron Knight and Eric Haas’ on every single page. But this ...” Michael held up the script in his left hand. “This could be any number of unsolicited manuscripts we get sent from unemployed losers who live in their parents’ basement and can quote the entire Halloween series verbatim. I don’t want that. I want something different, something no one has seen before. I want what you have.”

  He leaned forward and offered an encouraging smile.

  “I know you have an original voice somewhere inside you. It’s just that sometimes you need to spend a bit of time digging around to find it.”

  The two writers rose from their seats, still trying to reconcile the fact that Michael’s latest notes directly contradicted everything he told them in their previous meeting.

  “Oh, and get rid of all those dumb jokes,” he said before they left. “Never mix horror with comedy. The two just don’t go together. You’ll only end up with a cinematic spork.”

  A spork is a hybrid form of plastic cutlery consisting of a handle, a spoon-like scoop, and two, three or four fork tines. They are often distributed with fast food orders, airline food and prepackaged meals.

  Sporks are widely derided as a useless utensil due to the fact that the spoon scoop is too shallow to use for liquids, and the fork tines are too short to adequately hold solids. By attempting to perform two functions at once, it fails at achieving either.

  It is for this reason that films in the horror-comedy genre are sometimes referred to as “sporks”. The amount of violence and gore in such a film can be off-putting for viewers who might otherwise enjoy the comedic element, while the presence of humor in a horror film often lessens the impact of any tension or genuine scares.

  Rare exceptions include Evil Dead II, Scream and John Dies At The End.

  The blinking cursor on the blank Final Draft page continued to taunt Eric. He stared at it in the desperate hope that inspiration would strike from the clear blue sky and stimulate the flow of creativity. But after two hours of limp brainstorming, still nothing. Not even one solitary sentence. They were no closer to completing their next draft than they were a week ago.

  The past few days had been an empty void of despair and disillusionment. Cameron and Eric honestly didn’t know where they could go from here. They had done their best – twice – and failed miserably on both occasions. They had made a crucial error in assuming that a commercial horror film would be easy to write. It turned out that nothing could have been further from the truth.

  Their confidence was further shattered when they discovered an online petition had been set up by hardcore Wrong Turn fans demanding the reboot not go ahead. The petition claimed a substandard remake would harm the legacy of the original film, and that it would destroy the fans’ adolescence. Michael Bay advised them to ignore the backlash and not allow such criticism to affect their work. “Remember, those who can, do,” he told them. “And those who can’t, tweet.” But with so much online vitriol being hurled in their direction, it was hard not to take at least some of it to heart.

  A ghost of an idea formed in Eric’s head. “Hey, how about if we open with–”

  Just as he spoke, an errant backpack smacked into the side of his head. He looked behind to see a rambunctious group of high school kids pushing past their table.

  “You were saying?” Cameron said.

  “Oh, I was just going to suggest, uh ...” Eric trailed off, opting not to follow through with his thought. “Never mind.”

  “Maybe another refill will stimulate our imaginations,” Cameron said. He drained the remainder of his coffee and headed to the counter.

  Eric didn’t know why Cameron insisted on coming to this Starbucks outlet for regular writing sessions. He claimed that working in a public place was an effective way of drawing inspiration from your surroundings and writing about real people, but Eric questioned whether it did anything to help them at all. The place was always crowded, the noise distracting, the background music terrible, and the customers far too obnoxious or dull to be a useful source of material. It was an environment entirely unsuited to long periods of writing.

  He suspected Cameron came here for the same reason thousands of other aspiring writers across the city flocked to places like this, pounding away at their Macbooks while wearing cardigans and non-prescription horn-rimmed glasses – they wanted to show girls that they were artists. As a writer, it was difficult to use your talents to impress members of the opposite sex. Simply telling someone you wrote for a living wasn’t all that impressive, given that basically anyone who occasionally pushed a pen across paper could make the same claim. Musicians had a much easier time of it; they could just sing a few notes or strum a few chords on a guitar and instantly appear more attractive. Writing was more of a solitary pursuit, and as such it was harder to exploit as a pick-up technique.

  Cameron returned a few minutes later, holding a vanilla bean frappiccino for Eric and a skinny venti extra dry latte for himself. “Any luck?” he said.

  Eric shook his head. “Nothing yet.”

  They each took a sip of their drinks and resumed their staring contests with their laptop screens.

  A quarter of an hour went by without any further progress. Eric lapsed into a kind of trance, the blinking cursor having an almost hypnotic effect on him.

  “Maybe we’ve been approaching this whole thing the wrong way,” Cameron said.

  Eric snapped back to the real world. “How do you mean?”

  “Michael was right. We tried writing like everybody else. Is it any wonder that all we ever produced was mediocrity? Our biggest advantage was that we don’t write like anyone else.”

  He rapped his fingernails across the table as he tried to verbalize this sudden rush of ideas, triggered by five jumbo-sized caffeinated beverages.

  “Our first draft didn’t work because it was too self-indulgent. Our second draft didn’t work because it was too unoriginal. We need to locate that middle ground. Stay within the parameters of the genre but without losing our own unique voice and idiosyncrasies. Create a singular piece of work no other writer could possibly conceive of.”

  “Okay,” Eric said, not quite sure where Cameron’s present train of thought was taking him. “That’s a lot easier said than done.”

  Cameron paused for a moment. “You know what I’m thinking of right now? That script you wrote. The one that got you your agent.”

  A few years earlier, Eric had written a spec script entitled Rodney Luther King. It was regarded by many who read it as a truly groundbreaking work; a daring hip hop musical and alternate history drama that reimagined Rodney King as a revolutionary civil rights leader, rising up from the ghetto to unite the downtrodden and oppressed minorities in a society torn apart by bigotry and intolerance. It had featured on the Black List of Hollywood’s best unproduced screenplays, and such luminaries as Spike Lee and Cornel West had described it as one of the finest pieces of writing they had ever laid eyes on. But so far, all this buzz had amounted to naught. Instead of gathering awards and acclaim, as many predicted it had the potential to do, it only gathered dust on the desks of development executives. The major studios all had a blockbuster-heavy mentality that was extremely conservative and pathologically risk-averse. None of them would ever dare go near such potentially volcanic material.

  “Yeah?” Eric said. “What about it?”

  “You worked o
n that script for years and years, and it never really went anywhere. Anyone who read it could see that it had something special, but it was still missing a certain indefinable quality. That x-factor separating a good screenplay from a great one.”

  Eric nodded. “They said it lacked authenticity.”

  “Right. So what did you do to make it more authentic? How did you elevate your writing and take it to the next level?”

  Eric cast his mind back to that time, a couple of years prior. Frustrated by the lack of progress he was making with Rodney Luther King, he took the drastic step of moving out of their shared Hollywood Hills pad and into a lower-class urban neighborhood. During this time he met with and befriended members of the African-American community, drawing from their shared history and experiences to add depth and nuance to his writing. He attended cookouts and house parties, smoked blunts, watched Scarface, played street craps, and briefly joined a hip hop crew. He dropped his g’s when speaking and disregarded traditional grammar conventions. He even witnessed what he believed was a drive-by shooting, only to later learn it was just a lowrider with a backfiring exhaust.

  “That whole experience helped your script immeasurably, didn’t it?” Cameron said.

  “Of course,” Eric said. “Those three weeks were invaluable. But I don’t see what that has to do with our current situation. Unless you’re suggesting we go party in the woods with with a bunch of horny college kids?”

  “That wasn’t what I meant, although ...” Cameron stopped for a moment to consider this. “No, no, I didn’t mean it like that. I was thinking more about the villain than the protagonist, since the bad guy is the most important character in any work of fiction. See, that was the biggest problem with our previous drafts – the killer was far too bland. The hero can only be as heroic as the villain is monstrous, and ours was like every other generic antagonist in every other generic horror movie. For this script to be exceptional we have to create one that’s unforgettable. A force of nature.”