by Tom Vitale
“Perfect! And wait… what’s that, Mr. Papers?… YES!!!” I said, looking around. “Mr. Papers says we should send Greta on a wild goose chase, giving her the impossible task of securing permission to film… here… at Margaritaville! Let Greta know Tony feels it’s absolutely, absolutely necessary for the creative to film at Margaritaville. Tell her we know how hard it can be to secure permissions from major corporate chains, and we only have a few days left, so she should start on it ASAP. Make sure to emphasize, Tony says Margaritaville is really important. That should keep her busy for a day or two.”
“Are you sure we should be doing this?” Josh asked. Actually, I was not. Mr. Papers was a terrible influence. Or maybe it was the frozen margaritas and the pot. But this was no time to admit weakness of resolve.
“Do it,” I said.
“You guys are mental.” Carleene laughed. “But if that’s what you want, we can make it happen; it’s your show.” And I believed Carleene could make anything happen. Even though I had only just met her, it was obvious she was one of those people with a gift to move mountains. Carleene was Jamaica’s top music-video producer, and part of her magic was that you never saw it coming. She was creative, gorgeous, had a good sense of humor and a tough-as-nails attitude. Pity the waiter or cook who didn’t send our order out fast enough. Carleene would get up from the table, go back to the kitchen, and personally resolve the holdup. She was a force to be reckoned with, and everyone respected her. These were all ideal traits in a fixer. Best of all, Carleene was fun to hang out with. And she seemed to like Josh and me more than she liked Greta!
“I can negotiate a good rate for the extras by hiring local exotic dancers rather than the more ‘traditional’ type from a conservatory in Kingston,” Carleene said. “And we can talk to the Trident Castle about the Bond party. You’ll probably need flashing colored lights, strobe and smoke machines. It’s a tall order, but we can get a city bus as well.”
“There’s no way Greta will approve a funding request that cuckoo,” I said. “We just need her off our backs.” While I tried out the waterslide, Carleene and Josh crunched some numbers.
“Ooohhh, nice shell necklace,” Josh said when I returned from the gift shop. “So, this is what we came up with.”
JAMAICA SCENE COSTS:
Piggy’s (Jerk Chicken)—$200
Tony at GoldenEye—$500
Baby Lex Bar and Car Wash Scene—$600
Blackwell Drinks—$200
Dr. Hoe (local fishermen rum bar near GoldenEye)—$300
Meal at Chris’s (local’s restaurant near GoldenEye)—$300
Bus (need to rent a bus for driving beat throughout show)—$900
Beach Scene—$400
Home-Cooked Meal—$500
Boating Scene—$1,000
Trident Castle Meal and Bond Party—$3,500
Rio Grande River/Wild West Meal and Raft—$700
Crabbing Scene (Crab Hunt & Meal)—$300
B-Roll/Vendors—$800
Extras for Dance Sequences—$1,000
TOTAL: $11,200
“Perfect!” I said. “Just make sure to let Greta know the figures are estimates and subject to upward revision.”
“Sending!” Josh said, and clicked his trackpad with a flourish. We laughed and toasted our drinks. Almost instantly, Josh’s phone started ringing. Of course, it was Greta.
“Don’t pick up, we have to let this sit,” I said. “Let’s get another round!”
We successfully evaded Greta’s repeated emails, texts, and phone calls for about two hours until Lisa, Josh’s friend from the office, called.
“Please hold for Sandy and Greta,” Lisa said.
“Fuck,” Josh said, his phone in one hand, a rum punch–filled coconut with cocktail umbrella in the other. “They tricked me!”
“Put it on speaker,” I said, taking off my novelty sunglasses and putting out the joint.
“Josh, zis iz Sandy unt Greta,” Greta said sternly at the other end of the line.
“Hi, Josh,” Sandy, our executive producer, said. “Are you guys having a good time?”
“Ve have been trying to reach you az I vould like to interrogate you regarding zee budget request. For instance, vhat iz zis six hundred dollars for zee Baby Lex Bar unt Carvash scene?”
“Well, due to the schedule, we can only film at Baby Lex’s in the morning,” Josh said. “We need to buy drinks for people in the background to make the bar look full.”
“Vhy don’t you put zee drivers in zee background?” Greta asked.
“Oh, that’s a great idea, Greta, let’s give the drivers alcohol,” Josh said.
“Vhy not, zee drivers can drink juice,” Greta instructed.
“Greta… no, Greta, no…” Josh said. “Ain’t nobody drinks juice at Baby Lex’s Bar and Carwash.” There was a prolonged silence at the other end of the line. I could only imagine what they were thinking, and I had to hold my nose to keep from bursting out laughing.
“Unt explain yourself regardizing zee three thousand five hundred dollars for a James Bond party?” Greta demanded.
“Well, the dance troupe and voodoo priest might be more expensive than we’d originally hoped,” Josh said. “But on the bright side, we can get a great deal on a fire eater.”
“Hi, this is Sandy,” Sandy said. “I appreciate how much of this is coming from Tony and that you’re pulling the shoot together quickly, but the current creative costs are about double what we’re budgeted for.”
“Hi, Greta, this is Tom,” I said. “Any progress on securing permission to film at Margaritaville?”
“It iz a large organization unt zo far I have been having trouble reaching zee right department,” she said. “But ze procezz has been started.”
“Okay, well, it’s extremely important to Tony, and he knows you’re working on it.” There was no way in hell Tony would have wanted to film at Margaritaville, but Greta didn’t know that. And even better, I’d recently discovered that “Tony knows you’re working on it” was a magic set of words that sent the office into a terror.
With Greta preoccupied chasing her tail and Tony and the camera guys arriving soon, we still had to figure out what the show was about… so Josh and I went to the beach to get stoned.
“Hear me out,” Josh said. “What makes a Bond film? What’s the formula? You need a hero…”
“Bourdain, Anthony Bourdain,” I said, sparking another blunt.
“Yes! And an ultra-luxurious tropical location…” Josh said.
“Some place so perfect it’s practically evil?” I said, gesturing to our private beach.
“Plus, a villain with an evil master plan and some over-the-top HQ with henchmen,” Josh said, taking a hit.
“Well, Greta is bent on nuking anything fun in the Western hemisphere,” I said.
“No, Greta is just a henchman trying to distract from the true villain. Isn’t there someone else you can think of?” Josh said, passing back the blunt. He began humming the lyrics to the song “Margaritaville”: “There’s booze in the blender…”
“Wait… so, the villain is Jimmy Buffett?” I asked. Josh had a point. Buffett could have made for an archetypal Bondian villain, and the Margaritaville Organization was the perfect cover to steal all the beaches from the Jamaicans. The more of the island we’d seen, the more difficult it was to ignore the harsh contrast between resorts and the communities that serviced them. All the waterfront real estate had been snapped up by hotels, restaurants, and private vacation homes, and there was basically a tall concrete wall all along the coast. Shockingly, it appeared Jamaicans didn’t really have much access to their own beaches, unless they worked in the resorts.
“Shit, man,” Josh said. “If we expose Jimmy Buffett, it’ll make the next rock star think twice before starting an evil restaurant chain to buy up all the beaches.”
“It’s too bad there’s no chance Greta will come through with permissions,” I said. “Bond is just a historical and visual nod with t
he party.”
WHHHRRRRRFFFLLLLUUUUSSSSCCH. Tony exited his bathroom wearing a huge smile. “Did you hear that flush?” he asked. “Like the sound of a 747 taking off.”
Everything was coming up roses. Tony was happy with the hotel. And shockingly, the Nixon Madman seemed to have worked. Maybe too well… somehow—unbelievably—most of our cost requests had been approved. I was as flabbergasted as Mr. Papers. Now all of a sudden we had a new problem: figure out how to fit together all the disparate elements Greta was willing to pay for.
“You should have a rum punch,” Tony said. “They’re excellent.”
“I can’t, Greta is really cracking down on our drink bills,” I said, throwing a little gasoline on the fire.
Tony looked at me from over his iPad. “I’d like sixteen rum punches, please,” he said to Nicholas when he came to check on us. “You can have one of mine.”
Rum punches in hand, Josh, Tony, and I went to our private beach to smoke a joint. I decided this was as good a time as any to come out to Tony about our experiment with Nixon Madman and how it had gotten a little out of control. To my surprise, Tony thought it was hilarious.
“Just as long as I don’t have to be any part of that shit, shoot your heart out,” he said.
“We have Greta on a wild goose chase to secure permission at Margaritaville,” I added cautiously. “We went there on the scout, but it wasn’t any fun.”
“You went to Margaritaville?! Where’s my robot piranha? Summon the robot piranha!” Tony said, slipping into evil villain affectation while pacing the beach. “Fucking fat herpetic with a novelty drink. Someone should put a stop to his reign of fuckin’ terror right now, and every other bald fuck with a ponytail. Things to do tomorrow: Destroy Margaritaville. Start worldwide revolution… Find paracetamol with codeine, ’cause I could really use some right now… Actually… this being a former British island, you could probably get codeine in the pharmacy. Where’s the fixer?”
When we got back to the villa, Carl was in the lounge waiting for us. “Respect is true,” he said. “We are the two percent. We the two percent have to inform, keep adjusting. We are the newsmakers.”
Upon hearing we wanted to visit James Bond Beach, our host, Blackwell, had insisted his friend Carl accompany us. We’d tried to demur gracefully, but Blackwell had refused to take no for an answer. In his seventies, I guessed, Carl was rail-thin, flamboyant, bald, with dreadlocks, a thick beard, and pale blue eyes. He told us about the history of the island, his acting credentials, and a few details relating to the shoot at James Bond Beach in the morning before showing himself out.
“Fuck,” Josh said. “We’re out of papers.”
“I know how to make a bowl out of an apple and a pen,” I said. “It’s too late to bother Nicholas, but I bet we can get an apple at the concierge desk.”
We stumbled through the night jungle to the hotel office. While Josh asked for an apple, I took in the room. Nouveau Caribbean minimalist pastel chic. I noticed a large architect’s model beneath Plexiglas. Looking closer, I could see GoldenEye, and even the building we were in. There was the village of Oracabessa just on the other side of the perimeter wall. My eyes followed the coastline down to James Bond Beach. But instead of a rum shack and fishing boats, there was what looked like an extension of the hotel complex…
“Josh! Come over here!!!” I whispered.
We waited until we got back down to our beach, which we were pretty sure would be hard to bug, and packed the apple before talking. Though we were employing paranoid stoner logic, Josh and I started to put the pieces together.
“Shit…” Josh said. “The neck bone’s connected to the hip bone! No wonder the hotel didn’t recommend we film at James Bond Beach!”
“And is that why Blackwell is insisting on sending Carl along?” I asked.
“Blackwell purchased GoldenEye from the Fleming estate in 1976. Since then, he’s expanded the original property into a fifty-two-acre world class resort positioned as the flagship of his ultra-exclusive Island Outpost Hotel consortium,” Josh said, reading from the hotel’s promotional literature. “We’d better tell Tony!”
It was looking like the villain might not be Jimmy Buffett after all.
“So I think the ghost of Ian Fleming might be inhabiting this wooden dog I have and… well, anyway, that part is complicated,” I said, taking a hit of the joint before passing it to Tony.
“What Tom means to say, the important thing is that in the process of fucking with Greta we may have…” Josh paused to gather his thoughts.
“Accidentally uncovered a plot to steal the last public beach in Oracabessa,” I interjected. “And we sorta…”
“Might have stumbled into a Bond film!” Josh said.
“It sounds more like a tired Scooby-Doo mystery than a Bond plot,” Tony said, unimpressed.
THE NEXT MORNING WE ARRIVED early at James Bond Beach to find Carl already there. Everyone else at Dr. Hoe’s were local fisherman. But Carl looked like he’d come right from the salon, and he obviously wouldn’t have been here if we weren’t filming. He was dressed in—I don’t know what sort of style you’d call it—maybe like Studio 54 meets Tales from the Crypt. The Mona Lisa was emblazoned on his bright orange silk shirt, half her face dissolving into twisting snakes, a hundred eyes bedazzled with rhinestones.
“Jamaica is fortunate to have Mr. Bourdain and CNN in our presence,” Carl said.
“It’s just a normal conversation,” I said. This was supposed to be a nice, natural scene. Local fishermen went out each morning to haul in the catch. After the day’s work was done, they gathered at Dr. Hoe’s for a typical Jamaican fisherman’s rum breakfast. Tony would sit with them and talk, but Carl had placed himself in the middle of it all, interfering with the atmosphere and standing out like a sore thumb. I actually wasn’t sure why he was here. In the sobering light of the morning, our paranoid Bond delusions seemed a little far-fetched.
“Hello, gentlemen,” Tony said. “So is business better these days or worse these days?”
“Worse,” Carl said. “Overfishing is a problem. So right here has actually become a fishing sanctuary where we’re trying to now revive the fish stock around the island.”
Carl proceeded to cut everyone off and answer for them almost every time Tony’s questions related to fish. Which of course were most of Tony’s questions, given that we were talking to fishermen at a fishermen’s bar. This scene was going to be worse than my hangover.
“So, if this becomes a protected sanctuary, what are you going to do for a living?” Tony asked anyone but Carl.
“Yeah, so you have to go—” one of the fishermen began.
“Further out to sea for deep-sea fishing,” Carl interrupted.
“I guess what I’m asking,” Tony said, “is there a future for the traditional—old school, subsistence, fishing industry in Jamaica? Or do you think, like every place else in the Caribbean, is it going to end up an entirely tourist economy?”
“This is going to belong to the tourists,” said a fisherman wearing a checkered yellow shirt. “You got a point, and I’d like to clear up a point with you now all right. There’s a lot of things going on here, right? I read a piece of paper a couple months ago, what’s going on down here. Right? The native here, don’t have no beach in a few months’ time. They’re gonna have an ID to come inside here.”
“I don’t care about truth, man, we kill people for truth, man!” Carl said, suddenly losing his temper.
“Umm… did Carl just make a death threat on camera?” I asked Josh. But before he could answer, a fairly sensational commotion had erupted among the local fishermen, and the group began turning on Carl. There were shouts that the local school kids wouldn’t be able to use the beach road to get to classes anymore. It was only the second time in all my shows that such an unexpected fracas had erupted seemingly out of nowhere. The previous time it was to get out of paying the check at a Roman trattoria. This time it seemed a lot more serious. I cou
ld see in Tony’s eyes that his bully alarm had been triggered. Mr. Papers got knocked over in the chaos, breaking his foot. Carl pulled the fisherman in the checkered shirt behind the rum shack, making the classic mistake of forgetting his microphone was still recording.
“In order for the program to work, assuming, you just kick back and be cool,” Carl said menacingly. “You can’t expose yourself. ’Stand me?”
“What did he mean when he said ‘for the program to work’?” Josh asked.
Carl and the fisherman came back to the group, which is when it got even stranger…
“It’s a joyous day! Let us find the spirit in man and travel to the unknown,” Carl said in a booming voice that immediately quieted the other fishermen. “We are what you call astral travelers, so traveling dimension to dimension. If one man die, all men dead, and if one man live, all man live…” I couldn’t believe what I was seeing: on a dime everyone had gone from yelling to quietly nodding in agreement, seemingly hypnotized by Carl’s words. “Everything is relative,” Carl preached. “The cure, the money, everything is connected to the universe. One person does not realize how vulnerable we are within the changes of time. Earth will not disappear my brethren. As eye and eye.”
“SEE WHAT THIS SHOW’S ABOUT, right? It’s all coming together for me, who owns—who gets to live in paradise, right?” Tony said to the camera in the afternoon light on GoldenEye’s private beach. It was a beautiful spit of sand surrounded by a clamshell of cliffs and dense foliage. Small black-and-yellow bumblebee fish scooted through the coral pools that broke the Atlantic surf and ensured gentle bright turquoise waves. With every conceivable luxury only a call to Nicholas away, Tony mused on the strange plot unfurling around James Bond Beach just down the coast. “Let’s accept, as a basic premise, this is about as close to paradise as it gets, right? It’s Jamaica. Jamaicans live here. I mean… this place I’m staying was built by a guy who planned to live here, and lived here two months out of the year. You know, who gets to live like this? Well, me, clearly. Look, here I am, fully aware of the irony of the situation. The whole preservation thing: preserved for who? Save the reef, for who? Save the beach, for whom? Not you, motherfucker. Probably.”