Boss Lady

by Omar Tyree

  Tracy smiled and said, “That’s what I first thought when I started shopping scripts out here.”

  I said, “But you still have more personality than me for an actress. Most of my moves are made mentally, not physically, so I wouldn’t translate well in film.”

  “Not if you come dressed like you are now. You’d definitely translate on-screen,” she teased me.

  I smiled back at her and said, “We’ll see.”

  We stepped into the car; Tracy put the top down so the wind could jet through our hair on the way over to Culver City. It wasn’t a long drive from Marina Del Rey. They were both on the west side of Los Angeles.

  While she drove, I felt cocky enough to slap my right arm up on the door. You should have seen all the male drivers who usually paid me no mind, starting to look my way. Other women were checking me out, too, admiring my colorful spunk, I guess. Even Tracy noticed it.

  She said, “There’s something different about you now. Did you get some recently?” she joked.

  I grinned and shook my head. “I’ve been reading those Zane books,” I told her. I didn’t know yet if sex could change your outlook or not, but I wasn’t willing to admit to my cousin that I had gotten laid. Especially on account of being angry at her for stringing me along on the Flyy Girl project.

  She said, “Oh, yeah. Those things,” and turned up her nose.

  Tracy was ultra discreet nowadays after having so much of her racy teen years documented. Even Zane was a mystery. So she wrote the books and remained detached from them, while making a fortune from the hidden, freaky secrets of women’s sexual fantasies that included my own.

  We arrived at the low-key studio lot at Culver City where Susan was already waiting for us in the parking lot.

  I stepped out of the black Mercedes in my high heels and lime green getup, and immediately caught everyone’s attention.

  Susan spotted me and nodded her approval. “Great idea. I like that.”

  She was wearing a dark green business suit herself.

  “I see we’re both thinking about money,” I joked to her.

  She said, “Yeah, your bright, new money, and my dark, ugly, old money.”

  “They all spend the same,” I told her.

  “They sure do,” Tracy added.

  As we walked toward the front doors of this ordinary-looking light blue building for my first Hollywood meeting, Susan said, “You know, your outfit reminds me of when Tracy first started taking these meetings with me years ago.”

  “I told her that at the house as soon as I saw what she was wearing,” Tracy commented.

  “But I’m not trying to be an actress,” I told them both.

  “Nor was Tracy,” Susan reminded me. “Everyone forgets now that she was a writer.”

  Susan opened the heavy glass door and held it for us to walk through. And as soon as I walked in past the office cubicles inside the building, it seemed that all eyes were on me.

  “Looking good,” one white man said.

  “Thank you,” I told him.

  Tracy looked at me, smiled, and nodded. Then we strutted into this tiny room in the far corner of the building.

  “Hey, Louis, good seeing you again,” Susan greeted a short, balding white man in a light blue tennis shirt. He looked very casual and nerdish.

  He was all enthusiastic about seeing Susan. He walked out from behind his desk to shake her hand.

  “Hey, yeah, it’s been a minute,” he told her. Then he focused on my cousin Tracy. “And there’s our girl.” He blushed. “Led Astray is still doing well for us in DVD.”

  “When is it gonna buy you a new building?” she joked with him.

  “Hah, soon, soon,” he told her with a laugh. He even hugged Tracy. That was love and much respect.

  There were only two chairs in front of his desk, so I had nowhere to sit. Behind his desk to the left was a tall bookshelf of stacked movie scripts and a few books. On the bookshelf wall behind us was the same. There were various picture clips and film posters covering the walls around the room. One of them stood out, a poster for a film called Wanted. It looked like a dark-edged love story. A Fatal Attraction reversal with the man chasing the woman.

  “And, ah, who’s this, our Flyy Girl?” Louis asked in reference to me. He was already jumping to conclusions. I considered that a good thing.

  “She could be a lot of things,” Tracy spoke up for me. “Her name is Vanessa Smith, another Philadelphian.”

  Louis nodded and asked me, “You’re not related to Will Smith are you?”

  “Could be,” Susan filled in. “You never know. A lot of cousins don’t find out they’re related until they have those big family reunions sometimes.”

  “But you’re not related to him from what you know of?” he asked me specifically. I guess he wanted to see if I could talk without Tracy and Susan speaking for me.

  I said, “Would it get me more opportunities if he was my first cousin, or no? I’m still trying to decide on where I want to go with that,” I told him.

  I was taking Tracy and Susan’s lead on bullshitting the man.

  He laughed again and said, “Good answer. You guys have coached her well. So, you’re still not telling me if you are or aren’t Will Smith’s cousin.”

  I had no idea they would spend that much time on me after just walking in the door. So the pressure was on for me to keep the bullshit going.

  “Let’s just say I have a job to do first, then we can talk about who I’m related to,” I told him. “And if I do well, I’m related, but if I don’t, then I don’t want to bring anyone’s name down. I mean, I know how important a person’s name is in Hollywood. Names are everything out here.”

  “Yes, indeed they are, especially when you start talking about the big bucks people,” he told me. “Will Smith is big bucks people.”

  “So, her name is a good thing?” Tracy asked him.

  He frowned and took a seat back behind his desk. Tracy and Susan followed suit and took their seats, leaving me the only one standing.

  He said, “Actually, there have to be plenty of Vanessa Smiths, it’s a very common name. I was just making the connection to the Philadelphia Smiths.”

  “I would be Vanessa T. Smith,” I commented. “They didn’t get a chance to say that.”

  He nodded. “Vanessa T. Smith?” He was running it through his mind.

  “Or maybe just Vanessa T.,” Susan added to him.

  He nodded again and raised his index finger. “I like that even more. So, the big question is, is she our ‘Tracy’ from Flyy Girl?” He looked specifically at my cousin when he asked it. He said, “By the way, I read the script and it’s fabulous. You did another fabulous job.”

  “Thank you,” she told him. “But can you see Vanessa T. in the lead role, or do we need a Biker Boyz Meagan Good in the lead, and then move Vanessa T. over to a ‘Raheema’ role? And with Vanessa T. being from Philadelphia, she can coach any- and everyone on the roles.”

  He nodded and said, “Yeah, the girl in Biker Boyz. Meagan Good, is it? And she was the main girlfriend.”

  “Exactly,” Susan told him.

  It sounded like Louis was bullshitting himself. I bet if I showed him some pictures, he wouldn’t know Meagan Good from Shaniqua Jackson. And if he didn’t really know who Meagan Good was, then how would it matter?

  He finally cut the bullshit and said, “Well, that’s a casting issue anyway. We’ll get to those decisions when we need to. But the problem I’m having right now is with the script. I mean, it’s a great script, no doubt about it, but what kind of budget are we talking here?”

  He looked at Susan for that question.

  “Can we do a coproduction deal with another studio possibly?” Susan asked him.

  “Well, sure, we can get in bed with someone on this if we can work out all the right terms. But who’s really shooting urban-girl movies right now? I mean, not for theater. And not for this budget. You’re talking a ballpark figure of twenty-five mill
ion dollars here. So even if we did a split deal down the middle, you’re talking twelve-point-five that we won’t see a dime back from until we double it.”

  He searched for an explanation from Susan or Tracy.

  But I did the math myself and could no longer hold my tongue.

  I said, “This movie will do far more than twenty-five million. John Singleton did fifty-four million with Boyz n the Hood with no cult following. This book has thirty years of cult following.”

  “Yeah, but John Singleton had Ice Cube, Laurence Fishburne, Cuba Gooding Jr., the popularity of West Coast hip-hop, big guns, and Columbia Pictures behind him.”

  “Well, we can build our own group of stars, too,” I argued. “A lot of those people were not big names yet. They became big names after the movie.”

  “Yeah, but they had a big studio behind them and a mega marketing campaign,” he countered.

  I said, “Well, anytime you make a movie from a book, you’re going to have an added campaign coming from the book industry. Simon and Schuster would definitely back your marketing of this movie, because they’re going to sell more books behind it.”

  Louis looked away from me and at my cousin Tracy. She and Susan had not intervened yet to stop my arguments. It all happened so fast that I don’t believe they could have stopped it if they wanted to.

  He asked Tracy, “How many copies of the book have you sold? Can you get me the numbers?”

  Tracy nodded and said, “That’s as easy as a phone call.”

  Louis looked back at me and nodded with a slight grin. He said, “You remind me of a lot of young fiery starlets. They come in with their hearts afire, and they usually stick to it long enough to win. Tracy was that way herself,” he commented.

  “You have to be that way in this industry,” Tracy stated.

  “In every industry,” Susan added.

  Louis continued to nod. He said, “Now that doesn’t mean that you’ll be able to get Flyy Girl done here. It’s just too expensive. But we’ll see what we can do. Maybe we can get, ah . . . Lil’ Kim or Queen Latifah involved,” he commented. “They’re both hip-hoppers.”

  Susan agreed with him and said, “Yeah, we have a lot of different names and ideas to run through.”

  I decided to hold my tongue at that point. I was forgetting the laws of power that I had studied. Arguing with the man was not going to secure us a film deal. And he was right. We needed a bigger studio. He was already trying to think of marketing gimmicks to make the film happen. And shooting Flyy Girl with gimmicks would make it cheap, cheesy, and disappointing for all of the girls who believed in the book and would die to see the movie.

  I had nothing against them, but Lil’ Kim and Queen Latifah did not fit the Flyy Girl script. Period. End of story. The man was only trying to name-drop with them because they were both popular at the moment.

  Suddenly, I couldn’t wait to get the hell out of there. I had nothing else to say about it.

  When we got ready to walk out of his office, after another thirty-five minutes of worthless chatter about other film projects, everyone was peachy and cordial.

  “Well, call around and see how many people you can get involved,” Louis advised Susan.

  “Oh, we’ll stay busy on it,” she promised him.

  Louis smiled in my direction and said, “Oh, with Vanessa T. involved in the project, I’m sure you will. I’m sure she’ll find a way to get it done.”

  I was cordial myself, so I smiled back at him and nodded with no comment.

  Then he looked over at my cousin.

  He said, “With all three of you on the job, there’s no way in the world that it won’t get done.”

  It just won’t get done here, I thought to myself.

  * * *

  We walked out of the studio building toward our cars in the parking lot, and Tracy and Susan were all over me with praise.

  “You did good in there,” Tracy told me.

  “Yeah, you’ll have no problem holding your own out here,” Susan added.

  I was surprised by it. I figured my little temper tantrum was unprofessional. But they were both cheesing away.

  “You don’t think he took offense to me getting in his face like I did?” I asked them.

  Tracy said, “Not at all. You see what he said about it. He was impressed by you. And you stayed with the facts.”

  “Yeah, that’s the most important part. If you’re going to make a stand, then make sure you make a stand with the facts, and you leave the other opinions at home,” Susan told me.

  I nodded and assessed the meeting for myself.

  I asked, “So is that the typical Hollywood meeting? You go in and exchange niceties, talk a little about your project, and then talk a lot about everything else that they’re doing?”

  The rest of the meeting was all about what Wide Vision Films was up to.

  Susan spoke up first. She said, “You have to understand that every studio we take a meeting with will have their own projects on the table and other projects they’re thinking about doing before we even reach their door. And every executive understands that buzz is buzz, so they’ll talk you up about their projects, and their stars, and the things they would like to do because word of mouth always leads to more business.”

  Tracy looked at me and nodded in agreement.

  She said, “I usually don’t allow them to stray too far from what I want to talk about. But after two failed films at the box office, I have no choice but to listen to them. I still have to find new projects of my own.”

  I was beginning to understand things perfectly. When you’re hot, the focus is all on you. But when you’re not, you have to take whatever conversation you can get. And the only way to be hot was to have something that was out and selling.

  As we approached our cars, I asked my cousin, “So what are the sales figures on Flyy Girl by now?”

  She said, “We’re getting close to a million sold now. But the problem is, I still have more girls who like to share the book than buy it. So whenever I bring those numbers to a Hollywood meeting, they’re really looking at a fourth of the reading audience. However, we all know that plenty more people would be interested in seeing the movie who have never read the book.”

  Susan said, “Not only that, but as you’ve stated yourself, Vanessa, Flyy Girl has more of a cult following than a target audience. Tracy has an audience that she hasn’t really marketed to. And the difference is that a successful and specific marketing program would create a concentrated platform where the Hollywood execs would be forced to deal with us. But with Flyy Girl, you’re not dealing with any recent marketing attention, you’re dealing with the business as usual of a steadily selling book, and those books generally take much longer to pitch.”

  Tracy added, “It’s like all of these comic-book movies that Hollywood is so fascinated with now. Comic books have been selling steadily for years, but all of a sudden, X-Men works, and now they want to make everything.”

  “But you had a specific marketing program with the sequel, For the Love of Money,” I reminded my cousin. “And it worked. The book hit the New York Times bestseller list, and won an NAACP Image Award.”

  “But that was three years ago,” Susan commented.

  “Well, maybe we should write another one,” I responded.

  Tracy just shook her head as I reached the passenger-side door of her Mercedes.

  Susan smiled and said, “That’s a thought.”

  * * *

  As Tracy and I returned home in the car, I was in my own world. I was already thinking about the meeting with my crew of girls at the Flyy Girl Ltd. offices in Inglewood. What could we all do to make Flyy Girl a hot property within the Hollywood circles? That was all that was on my mind. I didn’t have much to say about anything else. I still had a lot of work to do and talk meant nothing.

  Tracy looked over at me from the driver’s seat. She asked me, “So, how do you think this first meeting went?”

  I didn’t fee
l like discussing it. My mind was already in a hundred other places. So I shrugged my shoulders and answered, “It is what it is. I just have to learn how to work it like you did.”

  Tracy smirked and grunted, “Hmmph.” She said, “To tell you the truth, I stop and wonder myself sometimes how I made it in Hollywood. It still seems like a dream to me as well.”

  I took another look at us cruising in her black convertible Mercedes-Benz out in sunny Los Angeles, California, and I said, “But it’s not a dream. This is really your life. You’ve made it. So I know it can happen.”

  Tracy was still unsure. She hesitated a minute. I could see her thinking about telling me something, but she didn’t want to. But then she let me have it anyway.

  “Everybody’s not gonna make it, Vanessa,” she told me. “That’s just the reality. And every film is not gonna get made.”

  I didn’t respond to my cousin. I couldn’t. What was I going to say? I had to prove that I would get the film done. There was no other way around it. But I couldn’t help myself. I had to respond to her. So I shook my head and eyed Tracy with spiteful intent.

  I said, “You’ve really changed since you’ve been out here. I never would have thought I’d see the day where you would give up on anything. I always looked up to you because you went for it against the odds, and you came out a winner. But now . . .” I shook my head and looked away from her.

  To my surprise, Tracy held her tongue. I felt for sure she would give me a piece of her mind, but she didn’t. Or at least not immediately. So after a few minutes of silence, I looked into her face again while she drove. I wanted to see if she really had nothing to say to me.

  That’s when Tracy smiled. She didn’t even look at me when she did it. She kept her eyes glued to the road.

  “What’s so funny?” I asked her.

  She had me just where she wanted me. But I had to pick her brains regardless. I knew she was thinking something. Tracy Ellison Grant was always thinking something.

  She shook her head back to me and answered, “Everybody thinks it’s that easy. And you know what? It is. Because when you’re going through whatever it takes in life for you to be successful, you just get in a zone. And you feel the burn, but then you don’t, because you’re too busy doing it.