by T Cooper
“What I’m really hoping to do is write and direct,” I said flatly.
XIII
After I sleepwalked through another week or two in a Nyquil haze, Leo and Tobey showed up one day with a few of the other guys and tons of supplies. They threw open the windows, stuffed the kitchen cabinets with food, fired up the barbecue, and set the blender buzzing with some high-octane frozen margaritas. It was a sparkling seventy-two and sunny Los Angeles winter day, and we sat by the pool in our shades, took a bunch of dips, and shot the shit for hours about any and everything but work.
After a few hours and at least as many drinks, I forgot about Svava and stopped longing for her to be there too. She’d only have made me anxious about whether she was having a good time anyway. But I still missed her. Shadows started creeping across the surface of the pool, and the sun was sinking behind the hill above the house—and that’s when Leo slipped into the water one last time and clumsily twisted his frame around a pink water noodle, floating there in the middle of the pool for a few beats before casually saying, “So, I brought over a stack of scripts and that software I was telling you about.”
My ears pricked.
“It’s shit-or-get-off-the-pot time, B.”
Whenever the creative impulse struck, it’d usually be accompanied by a craving for a soy latte, so I started working on my laptop at a comfortable corner table at the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf in West Hollywood. With Svava out of both town and contact more often than not, and the artistic bug occupying increasingly more real estate in my brain, I kicked the cherry juice habit and forced myself to keep regular office hours at the coffee house. I started off by reading tons of screenplays and taking copious notes on them; eventually I progressed to brainstorming and jotting little exchanges of dialogue and scenes, and then banging out a general three-act structure for my movie, like Syd Field suggests in his books.
The idea of putting my silly snippets of ideas into 120 pages of script was entirely daunting, but at that point I could get a meeting with any writer in town, and the few I had lunch with were all very encouraging and helpful. David Benioff suggested screenwriting was “easier than bedding a woman with Daddy issues,” while Diablo chirped, “I wrote Juno between shifts at Scores one night.” Mamet said, “Go fuck yourself, you fucking faggot.” So after a minor crisis of faith and another couple weeks of no-pressure doodling around on the computer, I mastered the screenwriting software and started to imagine my film in script form.
The pages flew off my paws—I’d have sucked down four lattes and three bagels with tofu-raisin cream cheese before I’d look up and realize it was nighttime. I could even start to gauge what time of day it was by some of the other creative types who frequented the Coffee Bean. At first I didn’t mind when people would approach and talk to me while I worked. Some would ask for an autograph or tell me they liked my work, and others were actors or writers like me, and we’d share strategies and problem-solving techniques for whatever scene we were struggling with that day. All of it only inspired me to work harder, to show them and everybody else what I could do, who Beaufort really was.
After a while the flattering intrusions felt increasingly like impositions, and I stopped clinging to the enforced structure of the coffee shop and started working at home, sometimes for eight- or ten-hour stretches at a time: Creative hibernation. I was inhabiting my skin for maybe the first time in my entire life. The writing process suited me; it felt right, really like me, like what I should be doing—dealing in my own words and not anybody else’s.
So it was completely against my agents’, colleagues’, and friends’ advice, but when the final call came and I was deep into a second draft of my script, I passed on The Golden Compass 2: The Return of Whimsy. There would always be another offer.
XIV
Back when we were shooting Separation of Oil and State, talking politics was, naturally, standard fare on set. It was the first time I really opened my eyes to what was happening in Iraq, and to the geopolitical impact it would have for decades, maybe centuries, to come. All of the Iraq War films that were coming out seemed to be lacking something to me, deficient in heart or an understanding of the micro threads involved in the macro quilt. But Bear was to be a simple story told against a complicated backdrop—a backdrop which the film was not designed even to bother trying to deconstruct or disentangle. Much less take a political stance on.
So I was floored when the head of a major company decided to greenlight my film, and let me make it the way I wanted to make it. The studio was hoping to capitalize on the success of Separation of Oil and State, and they signed Leo for a cameo appearance, so after a few meetings in which we went back and forth about the usual details, the budget people got to work and soon we were casting talent and hiring the best crew in the industry to be at my disposal.
Our first location was Morocco, to recreate most of the street and desert scenes. If I had to sum up those three weeks in Morocco, I would choose one word: HOT.
It was important for me that the street fighting in Bear be vaguely reminiscent of the battle of Hue in 1968. It wasn’t to be an overt allusion, but the Marines in Vietnam had of course been woefully unprepared for the kind of urban combat they encountered on the streets of Hue, and I wanted to faintly evoke that lack of education and fortification with respect to the 21st century Marine Corps’ experience, too. I don’t want to brag, but I think we nailed it.
Thousands of rounds were expelled, shit was blowing up everywhere, and guys were getting picked off in the street one after the other, their concealed blood capsules splattering in the dirt. It was just about the coolest thing in the world, the chaotic violence a controlled and intricate ballet, all in service of taking the audience on a quintessential epic journey from boy to man. I was honored to be at the helm of such a formidable project.
The rest of the film was shot in Arizona, with some interior scenes wrapped up on Los Angeles back lots. Svava actually flew to Arizona to join me for a week. She hadn’t shown her face much in the previous months, but she seemed suddenly very interested in being a part of my life on set, often clinging to my arm or hanging on my shoulder when I was trying to motivate my actors or set up a shot with my cinematographer. It was certainly nice to be the recipient of her attention again, but I could tell that people were starting to talk about us behind my back.
When the producer made a surprise visit to the set to make some suggestions and discuss some budgetary concerns, I was a nervous wreck, and Svava knew it. Nevertheless, she was all over the producer, hanging on his every word and laughing madly even when nothing was funny. It made my communication with the producer next-to-impossible. It was also obvious she was high much of the time, but there was nothing I could or even wanted to do about it. I was so tired every day after shooting, and all I cared about when we’d wrap during the wee hours was going back to the hotel and collapsing in my quiet and clean bed, whether Svava was sharing it with me or not.
As it turned out, she netted more from her visit to the set of Bear than just some face-time with her supposed main man. The day before she left town, Svava let it slip that she’d just landed a speaking role in my producer’s next film. And that she needed to get back to L.A. quick, because they were starting to shoot that next week.
XV
ANOTHER IRAQ WAR FILM? WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?
WHERE’S THE LABEOUF? SHIA FIZZLES AS LABEAR
BEAR NOT A BULL AT THE BOX OFFICE
MISSION NOT ACCOMPLISHED: BEAUFORT A NO-FORT
WHY DOESN’T AMERICA WANT TO WATCH IRAQ WAR FILMS?
I guess critics don’t know a metaphor when they see one.
And Shia LaBeouf was in fact the perfect choice for the main character of Bear, the 18-year-old enlisted Marine from Alaska who gets called out by his bunkmates when they discover he secretly sleeps with a stuffed bear that he also totes in his pack throughout their deployment. That little bear ends up saving most of the platoon members’ lives, but whatever—
/> We didn’t even open in the top ten that first weekend, and after that, my agents stopped returning my calls. There was nothing we could do but ride it out and assess the damage later, they assured me; the studio had already jumped ship and was on to their next great white hope anyway. Leo was no help from where he was on location in Africa, and Svava hadn’t returned a phone call, text, or email from me since the night of the premiere, when there had still been so much optimism surrounding the film.
So I had no idea what to do with myself besides sit anonymously in the back of theaters all over L.A. and try to gauge audience reactions on a case-by-case basis. It was so depressing: most of the screens were running at 50% or less, and it was obvious the movie would be pulled from theaters as soon as our initial contracts ran out. I wept the first time I watched people walk out in the middle of a show.
After seeing the thing three times at three different theaters in the Valley one particularly pathetic night, I drove by Svava’s condo and parked outside, sinking low in my seat and surveying her front door for hours. At about two in the morning a black Mercedes with tinted windows rolled up, and sure enough she stepped out of it, offering a limp hand to my producer, who then accompanied her inside after glancing quickly over each shoulder.
Couldn’t imagine wanting anything else but me, huh? Hell, I didn’t blame her; I’ve seen Tod Browning’s Freaks.
Everybody had told me, “Write your story.” And I did. Or I thought I did. Small town Bear gets pushed out of the nest way too young by his mother, lives in the hulking shadow of an absent father, pushed around and misunderstood by other boys. Feels like he’ll never belong anywhere, so he embarks upon an odyssey looking for he has no clue what, but ends up stumbling upon nothing less than his own manhood, and—most importantly—discovering that he doesn’t have to be like everybody else in order to belong. How much more obvious could it get?
But of course the studio came in and fucked with everything. The more money they poured in, the more problems they teased out. Added a love story in the form of a pregnant high school sweetheart back home. A “happy” ending where nobody significant dies. A little brother with vaccine-induced Asperger’s Syndrome. And I was on board with it all. Or that’s what they made it seem like at the time. Like each and every goddam decision had been mine.
I was determined to write another movie, one that wouldn’t be hijacked or tainted by concerns about market share or money. The only thing that assuaged the searing indignation and shame in my gut was Svava’s powder. So I’d snort a little and then pound away at the laptop for a few feverish hours each night before collapsing, overdosed on exhaustion and self-loathing. But in the morning I’d blink open my eyes at the screen and it’d all be gibberish. Garbage. At which point I’d just fall back asleep and repeat the same process the next day.
XVI
When my new issue of GQ came in the mail I opened it right up, and who the fuck do you think I saw staring up at me with a big fat corny smile on his hairy mug? Bigfoot. That fag. Ended up taking the part of the warrior polar bear in The Golden Compass 2: The Return of Whimsy, “revolutionizing” the role and bringing an element of “hirsute realness” critics were saying had been missing from the first animated installment of the movie.
My paws were shaking so wildly, the leaves of the magazine shuddered in my grip. I pressed on, and there it was in the third paragraph:
Producers say they had originally gone out to Beaufort for the pivotal role—an obvious fit—but that they were actually quite pleased when he declined. “There was a coldness to him,” said one. “With the casting of Bigfoot we pushed the envelope and thought outside the box.”
“Bigfoot really opened me up,” added Kidman. “As an actor, and as a person.”
Filmmakers believe they cracked open the polar bear character, moving in directions they had no idea were possible before the Sasquatch entered the picture.
Thus, I was blindsided by reality. Wrecked. There in the glossy pages of Gentleman’s Quarterly, plain as snow for the whole world to see: the worst decision I’d made in my entire life. There had been no more offers. And they weren’t coming either. There was no denying I was in director and actor jail, and nobody wanted to touch me. No clawing my way out of this one.
Late that night I found myself wandering Hollywood Boulevard near my old apartment, and squatting at the end of the bar in the Frolic Palace, downing 2-for-1 rum and Coke specials by the paw-full. I didn’t recall, but I must’ve Hoovered the rest of Svava’s powder stash before leaving the house because my nose was pulsing and burning and itching, and the other patrons were looking at me warily, even the old drunk I used to give dollar bills to when I first started making money.
The whole room was doing half-spins and then correcting itself over and over in my brain, and at some point a leathery lady with the crookedest teeth I’d ever seen sidled up to me and slurred through her jacked-up grill: “You’re that thing from the movie, aren’t you?”
I shook my head.
“No, I know it’s you,” she insisted, pressing her small hands into my furry haunches. “I thought you died or something.”
A few minutes and $25 later, she was on her knees in front of me in an alley around the corner, a dingy rabbit fur coat sliding off her bony shoulders. I couldn’t relax—all I could think of was Svava and the stark contrast of this lady’s grotesque mouth on me. It felt terrible, so I closed my eyes and cracked my head a few times back against the side of the building I was leaning up against. At least it was something to feel. And when I opened my eyes and looked back down, a glossy card tumbled by in the breeze and landed face-up by the lady’s bruised knee:
If you are not happy with life, find out why.
Try a Free Personality and Stress Test.
Jonathan at the testing center led me to a desk and sat me down with a pencil and a sheaf of forms. He put a hand on my shoulder and squeezed, told me to be as honest as I could in answering the questions. So I got to work. Some were easy (Can you see the other fellow’s point when you wish to?), while others I anxiously considered for a ridiculous amount of time before answering Yes, No, or Maybe (Do you consider the modern prisons without bars system “doomed to failure”?).
When I was finished, Jonathan poured me some barley juice and took me into a quiet booth to administer a final test on a machine he called an E-Meter. Then he asked if I’d like to hear my results. “I don’t know, do I?” I joked, but he didn’t laugh.
Jonathan closely scrutinized the printed out diagram for a moment and then spoke: he said it was abundantly clear from the graphs that I was deeply depressed, and also that I’d scored very low on the composure scale, which suggested to him that I tended to be a very nervous and anxious individual. Further, my responsibility score was alarmingly low, while my criticalness score was extremely high. He concluded by pointing out that while parts of my personality were very strong, others—especially those which would enhance my relationships and career—could use some serious help. He suggested a couple classes, which I enrolled in immediately using my black AmEx card to reserve my space.
I shook Jonathan’s hand and promised to show up the next day for the first class. “Something’s holding you back,” he said, smiling enigmatically. “I don’t know who or what it is, but it’s seriously suppressing you, and disconnecting from whatever it is is going to do nothing less than revolutionize your life.”
XVII
I figured out why Bear was such a monumental failure. Why I felt like such a monumental failure, even though by any stretch you could say I’d taken lemons and made lemonade out of my life.
At the Scientology Center I learned that the most significant engram of my past—when the ice broke between my mother and me—was getting in the way of my creativity and native individuality. The trauma was keeping me in a constantly reactive state of mind, and until I became free of those negative influences, I would never be in complete control of my mental energy, my life, and most important
ly, my emotions.
I had unwittingly been feeding my reactive mind for generations and eons (even before the primary trauma with my mother), and once I realized it was the source of my fears, insecurities, pains, and nightmares, I could wrest back control of my life and eventually stop beating myself up for the failure of my movie, my relationship with Svava, and my general dissatisfaction with life.
More and more of my time and money was being spent at the Center on my auditing sessions and niacin supplements. I wasn’t yet working again, but I figured I had enough savings to stay afloat for a good year or so. I did, however, trade my Prius for a 1977 Gremlin, because I was dead-set on working through the gradients at the Church, so I could one day get sprung from director jail and really start getting my career and life back on track—and fulfill my true unique potential. Speaking of which, CAA dropped me from my contract, but immediately afterwards the Center hooked me up with Jenna Elf-man’s agent, who promised to find me some pay gigs while I traveled along the Bridge to Total Freedom. My only hope was to become Clear and be introduced to the Operating Thetan levels of the Church one day.
I spent a great deal of time on the freeway in my Gremlin. It took longer to get across town to auditions and interviews of course, because I couldn’t use the Diamond lane anymore without a hybrid vehicle or carpool. My new agent kept me busy with several commercial auditions—Klondike Frozen Novelties, Larry’s Big & Tall, Sunset Tanning Centers—but nobody seemed to want me to shill their products. Not even the reality show “I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here” would bite. “Too urban,” they told my agent.