by Lynn Messina
What movie? “Lloyd is still trying to make Jarndyce and Jarndyce. He’s lining up independent financing,” Lester explains.
The words sound so simple when he says them, and yet when I try to arrange them into a coherent sentence in my head, I come up blank. He has to repeat it three times before I finally get it. J&J isn’t dead. “But you said that wouldn’t happen. You said he has to cultivate relationships with the new regime and wouldn’t waste another second on J&J. That’s what you said.”
I know I sound accusatory; I don’t care. When the movie died, every breath of hope was squeezed out of me, hundreds of pounds of pressure crushing every cherished dream from my lungs until I was as flat as a board. It hurt in every way possible—mentally, physically, emotionally—but I got over it and moved on.
I don’t want to learn now it was for nothing.
Lester skirts the issue, staying in the present. “Lloyd is very close to securing the financing, which is why you have to pull the article.”
With each new statement he makes, my confusion grows. I close my eyes and take a deep breath. I’m not stupid. I can figure this out. Let’s start at the beginning.
“What does the article have to do with the financing?” I ask.
“Your article compares your book unfavorably with The Hanging Judge at Midnight,” he says.
“No, it doesn’t,” I say. “If anything, my article compares The Hanging Judge unfavorably with mine.”
“You say The Judge is a national best seller and about to hit movie theaters in two weeks. You say J&J barely made a splash and its film deal died on the vine. The Judge is the champion and J&J the runner-up. That’s unfavorable. You can’t run an article that’s unfavorable. You and your book deserve better.”
Well, yeah, if you compare them in the most superficial way, then The Hanging Judge wins out, but my article makes it clear that there are estimations of success that don’t involve crude dollar signs. Mine was the better book; every reviewer said so. “I appreciate your concern but I’m not worried, and if I were, I think it would be worth the risk,” I say, hoping this will be the end of it. I appreciate Lester’s advice but his sense of the enormity of the event—Sunday Styles, the section everyone talks about on Monday morning—is skewed by his West Coast-ness. The only daily he reads is Variety.
“Ordinarily I’d agree but it’s not that simple,” he says. “Think about it: Why would anyone want to make, let alone finance, the loser book? Everyone wants to back a champion.”
I blink several times and replay his comment carefully in my head to make sure I heard him right. Did he really just say loser book? Am I back in high school? Are producers really such facile creatures that they operate on the principals of the playground? Is some bully going to beat me up now?
Baffled by Lester’s logic, I throw myself on the couch and close my eyes. I can’t believe this is happening to me. Getting published in the New York Times is supposed to be unalloyed joy; now it’s just one more thing torturing me.
“They don’t have the option,” I say. “They let it lapse. If they want to make the movie, why don’t they have the option?”
“Chancery doesn’t have any money. Their discretionary fund is courtesy of Arcadia and can only be used for Arcadia projects, which this no longer is. When they tie down their financing, they’ll reoption it. By all indications that could happen very soon.” Realizing the delicacy of the situation, he imbues his voice with sympathy. “I know how hard this decision is. The article is beautifully written and you should be very proud of it. But it doesn’t stand up against the movie. I’m seventy percent certain J&J will be under option again by the end of the month. That’s ten thousand dollars. I know the article is a sure thing and the movie is a gamble, but don’t you have to bet on yourself? Trust me, I understand the appeal of the article, but the movie will help your career much more in the long run.”
But he doesn’t understand at all. He has no idea what’s going on inside me. Already hope has infected my body, pumping its way through my bloodstream like poison until it reaches my heart. I think of Lloyd toiling behind the scenes to make my movie happen, not giving up, not abandoning me, not choosing the goodwill of his new bosses over J&J, and I feel myself slowly reinflating.
I don’t want this. I know the depth of this hole and how hard it is to climb out of. I’d rather cut off a limb than find myself back in the claws of hope.
It hurts too much.
And there is it encapsulated: I don’t want to get hurt again. Like any woman who’s had a bad breakup, I don’t want to rush into another relationship.
I am every Lifetime movie ever made.
I don’t say any of this to Lester because I know he doesn’t care. My emotional needs aren’t his problem. He’s here for the fifteen percent and only the fifteen percent. That’s why he didn’t tell me about the independent financing—because until there’s money for the option, the project doesn’t exist. It’s a glean in Lloyd Chancellor’s eye, and in the meantime it’s his job to make sure I don’t do anything to screw it up.
Promising to think about it, I hang up and immediately call Simon. Suddenly I’m ridiculously thankful that he’s been through it all before. If only my present were truly his past.
I give him a brief rundown of the morning’s events and wait anxiously for his opinion. I have no idea what he’s going to say. Lester’s loser-book take seems ridiculously absurd to me but this is opposite land, where things runs counterintuitive. Maybe he’s right.
“Call Lloyd,” he says.
This is not what I’m expecting. “Huh?”
“Call Lloyd. If you’re going to pull the article for him, he should at least tell you why.”
I think of the man I stood next to at the party, the detached professional in the sharkskin suit, and feel a tremor of alarm. It doesn’t seem right that someone like me call him up on the phone and presume to talk to him. “You really think I should?”
“I think you need more information. I don’t agree with Lester’s reasoning. He could be right but he could be wrong. He calls J&J the loser book; I call it the underdog. The second you run the article, it becomes the comeback story, and everyone loves a comeback story, especially Hollywood.”
He’s so calm and rational, I feel some of my anxiety subsiding. If he could see the negative energy swirling inside me now, he’d be knocked over by the gale-force winds. “OK.”
“Call Lloyd,” he says again.
“Right.”
“Then call me back.”
“Will do.”
He’s silent for a moment, then: “Ricki, I’m sorry about this.”
Simon thinks this is all his fault, but it’s not. It’s Lester’s. If I’d known there was anything on the line, I wouldn’t have written the story in the first place. “Don’t be silly. Do you know what a thrill it is for me to know I wrote a Times-quality piece? It’s pretty amazing.”
“Glass-half-full—I like it.”
“And they’re still trying to make my movie. That’s a good thing, right?” I add.
He manages an upbeat yes, but I can tell what he’s really thinking: that sometimes it’s better to get off the roller coaster than suffer another round of ups and downs.
It’s hard to argue with the logic.
The thought of calling Lloyd directly terrifies me, and I pick up the phone six times before I actually dial his number. I don’t know why I’m so nervous. He’s just a guy who runs a production company, and only a moderately successful one at that. I mean, it’s not like he’s Scott Rudin.
I chant this in my head while I dial the number.
A woman with a clipped British accent answers, and I fumble through an explanation of who I am. She puts me on hold. Nadia immediately p
icks up and says Lloyd was hoping to speak with me today. “He’s on the other line but should be off in a minute. Do you mind waiting?”
Her niceness is so unprecedented I realize for the first time how much trouble I have caused with my little article, and I smile, imagining the tizzy the call from the Times must have set off yesterday. If I can humble just one supercilious assistant who won’t give me the time of day, then maybe this awful debacle is worth it.
Lloyd keeps me waiting ten minutes. “Hello, Ricki,” he says warmly, “it’s been a while since we’ve talked. How are you?”
Common courtesy is the last thing I expect. “In a bit of a turmoil,” I say honestly. “This article for the Times has me confused and upset.”
“Understandable,” he says. “It’s a great article, by the way. Very clever and neatly written.”
His comment takes me aback and I realize then and there that Lester forwarded him a copy without my permission. Something about this discovery makes me extremely uncomfortable. Suddenly I feel like the target of a vast conspiracy. Why are they working so hard to put me down? Am I that dangerous? Am I really going to do so much harm? Or is it simply the exercise of power for the sake of power? A little flexing of the dictatorial muscle? Kill the little nobody writer’s story just because you can.
Maybe they’re not even making my movie at all. They don’t want it, but they don’t want anyone else to want it either.
“As much as I admire it, though, I don’t think this is the right time for it,” Lloyd adds quickly.
“Why not?” I ask suspiciously, silently daring him to repeat Lester’s speech about loser books so I can hang up with a bang. If they’re going to make me give up the best thing in my life simply to gratify their egos, they’re going to have to do work harder than that.
“You set up Jarndyce and Jarndyce as the other Hanging Judge at Midnight,” he says. “This is a serious problem for me because the hardest part of my job for the last three years has been convincing people that Jarndyce and Jarndyce isn’t the same book as The Hanging Judge at Midnight. So I really can’t have the author of Jarndyce and Jarndyce announce in the New York Times that she wrote the other Hanging Judge at Midnight. It would ruin everything for me.”
As far as arguments go, it’s much better than the one about losers books and it gives me pause. For the first time since this disaster started, I imagine the call to Angela Deering. She’ll hate me. The photo department has been chasing down pictures of me with Moxie Bernard for nothing.
The New York Times will never run anything of mine again.
Who am I kidding? This is all I have. One fucking movie that doesn’t exist, that might exist again.
When I don’t say anything, Lloyd continues. “I know you have doubts but trust me, I will get this movie made. I’m a bulldog. I’m stubborn and persistent and I have a vision. I will not give up. And you’re not giving up anything either. You’ll see at the premiere.”
His confidence is so powerful, it’s like a living thing, and I can feel the strong bands of its arms wrapping themselves around me. Right here, right now, I believe in the movie as firmly as I believe in my mother. It is something that has nurtured me for thirty years and could nurture me for another thirty.
“This is a particularly delicate time for me,” he adds, “since we’re about to lock down the financing. I’m one week away from twenty-four million dollars to make the movie, and I can’t risk my finance guys seeing the article and saying, What’s going on with this? It’s too important. Trust me, I’ve been working on this film for three years. I’ve got as much invested as you.”
I don’t know how it’s possible for him to have as much invested as me but something about his argument rings alarmingly true. He has been working on J&J for three years. Despite the obstacles, he’s remained true to his vision. It’s no more his fault that Arcadia fired Miriam Heeger than it is mine, and yet he believes so strongly in J&J he’d rather risk alienating the new regime than give it up.
That has to be worth something.
More confused than ever, I thank him for his time and promise to let him know what I decide. He says it’s been great talking to me and insists that I call with any questions. “Remember, we’re in this together.”
I hang up, lie down on the couch and cover my eyes with my fists. I know what’s going to happen. In six months from now, in nine months, in a year, I’ll have nothing: no option, no movie, no Sunday Styles. I’ll be back to where I started, with no reason to hope nor any ability to cope. I’ll take to the couch and never get up again.
But there’s nothing I can do about it. Seeing the future bearing down on me at a hundred miles an hour, I can’t swerve to miss it. The only reason I wrote the essay was I had nothing to lose.
Now I do.
Tears welling ridiculously in my eyes, I pick up the phone and call the New York Times.
Day 1,094
Harry thinks I did the right thing and takes me to lunch to celebrate the regeneration of my movie career. We go to the set of Will Smith’s new film, an action adventure being shot entirely on location in Los Angeles. Its budget, in the low two hundreds, mysteriously covers luxuries like excellent craft services.
“Not so mysterious,” Harry says as he checks the rearview mirror and straightens the car. He’s an excellent parallel parker, a skill that continues to elude me fifteen years after my road test. That I’ve spent the last decade in Manhattan hasn’t helped the cause. “Gordon Cavanaugh is finicky and precise, as a director and a diner, so he insists on the best. Instead of using one of the usual companies, he hires the executive chef at La Cachette to provide all the meals. When I’m hugely famous, he’ll be the only director I’ll work for.”
We turn right on Grand, which is clogged with trailers, klieg lights and electrical wires and cordoned off by traffic cones. Dozens of people scurry back and forth as they rush to set up the shot while dozens of others wait impatiently on the sidelines. The Disney Concert Hall, glistening silver in the sunlight, watches the hum of activity with an air of superior boredom, perfectly indifferent to its fate as a prop about to be blown up by the conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, who is also a spy for Russia. To Mother, with Love is a Cold War spoof, a sixties throwback, an ironic pastiche and an earnest effort.
At least that’s how Harry describes it when he runs through a brief plot synopsis. According to him, the most important part of craft services reappropriation, as he calls is, is familiarity with the film’s details. Knowing that Johnny Depp’s character is based on Esa-Pekka Salonen, the philharmonic’s Finnish music director, is the difference between a free gourmet lunch and forceful ejection from the set.
Halfway down the block, a young guy with a baseball cap and a clipboard stops us to ask our names. I stare at him blankly, wondering why Harry didn’t prep me for this, while my companion rattles off two names I’ve never heard before. The guy instantly sheds his superior look, nods obsequiously and begs us to have a nice day.
As soon as we’re out of earshot, I ask who Cheryl Mohaney and Keith Wharton are.
“Studio execs. IMDB lists the key people involved,” he says, turning in the direction of the craft services tent. We’re at least ten feet away but the wonderful flavors are already wafting toward me. The smell of Belgian waffles teases my nose.
“Can I start with dessert?” I ask.
“It’s your party, you can do whatever you want,” he says indulgently. “But I seriously recommend that you try the bourdin. Best sausage you’ll ever have in your life.”
Although it’s one o’clock, the height of the lunchtime rush in midtown Manhattan, the tent is empty except for a few stragglers reading the paper and sipping coffee.
“They must be setting up a scene with the extras. Otherwise this place would be teaming wi
th extras looking to supplement their meager salaries with food for a week. Sometimes it’s like a college dining hall. I’ve actually seen people take out Tupperware,” he says as he hands me a tray.
His tone is scornful, without a hint of irony, as if the behavior of hundreds of hungry extras taking their official lunch break is somehow worse than ours. In Harry’s philosophical outlook, it is more egregious to take a mile when you’re given a yard than to steal the entire ruler.
The hypocrisy of it makes me uncomfortable but before I can think it through my eyes meet the salad spread and everything else leaves my mind as I take in the four types of lettuce, the beautiful avocado slices, tomatoes as red as candy apples and luscious goat cheese croutons. I’m in heaven.
Harry suggests we start with the first course and pace ourselves. “Think of it as an all-you-can-eat buffet,” he advises. “Do a round of small portions so you can taste everything, then go back for your favorites. And don’t forget to leave room for dessert.”
Following his advise, I limit myself to only five goat cheese croutons and half an avocado. I chose a balsamic vinaigrette dressing that’s tangy and sweet.
With our choice of locations, I pick a table in the far corner to stay under radar but Harry assures me it’s not necessary. “Once you get past the power-hungry flunky with the clipboard, you’re in. Nobody cares. I’ve been reappropriating craft services for years and have never been caught. I’ve even gotten a few parts this way but I didn’t take them. They were much too small. I’m not in it for two lines in aisle five at a Wal-Mart.”
I’m not surprised Harry could talk himself into a role—he has a natural charm that wins people over—but I’m amazed he could talk himself out of one. Two lines in aisle five at a Wal-Mart seems like a great place to start.
“So tell me more about the movie,” he says. “Is Moxie still on board?”
I haven’t thought of Moxie in days. It didn’t even occur to me to ask Lester if she’s still involved. “No, I don’t think so. Someone would have mentioned it, right?”