by Lynn Messina
“The tricky part, as with any film, is pulling together the financing. Joshua has enough to cover development but is only just starting to work on production. All he needs is a little seed money to start with. He thinks fifty thousand should do it. Nothing propinks like propinquity, right?” Tulk says. He’s so busy talking, he’s barely touched his salad.
Although I think it’s a rhetorical question, it quickly becomes clear he’s waiting for a response. “I’m not sure. What does propink mean?”
“I’ve just dated myself, haven’t I, sugar pie?” he says with a self-conscious smile. “It means money makes money. If Joshua can show potential investors that he already has investors, then it’ll be easier to get investors. Does that make sense?”
It’s an age-old concept, repeated many times at the law firm, and I nod emphatically.
He smiles and takes a sip of his coffee, which must be cold by now. “Good. So what do you think?”
I keep my concern about Abel Fiero winking his way through the movie to myself and tell him I think it sounds wonderful. I can’t wait to get started.
“Don’t rush into anything,” he says cautiously. “Fifty thousand dollars is a lot of money.”
I’m about to agree—to say, Yes, fifty thousand dollars is a lot of money—when it hits me that he means fifty thousand dollars is a lot of my money. The idea is so insane, so incredibly detached from anything real or possible, all I can do laugh hysterically until tears fall from my eyes. Tulk waits as I struggle for breath and clutch my stomach. I can’t remember ever being so amused in my entire life.
This has to be a joke. I’m being punk’d. Where’s the camera?
It takes me five minutes to regain control, another three to calm down. By the time I’m able to breathe normally, Tulk has finished his salad. The waitress is refilling his coffee cup.
“I’m sorry,” I say, still a little breathless. “It’s just that it’s such a crazy idea. Don’t you think it’s crazy?”
Tulk smiles but doesn’t seem amused. “Why is it crazy?”
“Because…because…” I sputter. Sometimes something’s so obvious, you can’t even begin to articulate it. I close my eyes and slow down. Why is it crazy? Because the fifty thousand dollars is everything I own and everything I am. It’s my comfort and my security and my peace of mind when things get rocky. It makes all things possible.
I haven’t spent my whole life hoarding my grandparents’ legacy just to throw it away on the first reckless gamble to come my way.
I try to explain this to Tulk, thinking it’s logical and self-evident, but he surprises me by sticking just as staunchly to his point. “Tad Johnson isn’t a reckless gamble; it’s a sound investment. I shouldn’t have to tell you that. You’ve got a producer and a star lined up and a home run of a script. When they talk about limiting liability, this is exactly what they mean. You came out here to be a filmmaker, right?”
As much as I want to cover my ears and block him out, I sit there quietly and nod.
“Well, this is your chance. Think about it.”
But the thing is, I don’t want to think about it. It’s far too scary. My first reaction is the right reaction. This is all a big joke. Sooner or later the men with the cameras will jump out and yell, Gotcha!
“Don’t look so serious,” he says. “Whatever you decide, this is still exciting news. The deal they’re offering is very fair. You’d be a full partner and get ten percent of the gross. That’s gross, not net, which is what we want. No film actually nets money but gross is whatever it pulls in. A modest indie like, say, The Station Agent, made five million. So in that case you’re looking at five hundred thou. How do you like them clams? As for credit, like I said, you’re in for executive producer, which means you’d get to accept the Oscar.” He winks. “You might want to prepare a speech beforehand. I hate when they go up there and stammer.”
I shake my head, terrified of the logic. Everything makes sense when he says it.
“Remember, we’re not coming to any decisions right now. We’re just looking at our options.”
He can say that all he wants but it’s clear where he really stands. His mind is made up. “But you think I should do it.”
Tulk immediately shakes his head. “No, I think you should do it if you think you should do it.”
I lay my head down on the table. “Tulk, that’s pure double talk.”
“Listen, my job is to give you the benefit of my experience. That’s all. I’ve been around a while and seen some things and then I come here for the flan and tell you about them. I can tell you that the deal is fair. I can tell you that people invest their money and the equivalent in films all the time. Hilary Swank got paid a measly three thou to do Boys Don’t Cry. How’d that work out for her? Ed Burns maxed out his credit card to make The Brothers McMullen. Another not-so-terrible outcome, wouldn’t you say? Should I go on? I’ve got a million of these. The point is, you have to have faith in yourself and your project. If you have that, you have everything. If you don’t, then maybe you shouldn’t be here.” He wipes his hands on his napkin, throws it on the table and looks around for our waitress. “Now, are you ready for flan?”
I smile wanly and nod yes, but the truth I couldn’t possibly eat another thing because my stomach still hurts.
And the pain isn’t from laughter but fear.
Days 1,302 through 1,309
Following Tulk’s advice, I decide not to decide. I leave it in the hands of fate: If the investors come through with the money for J&J, I’ll do it. If they don’t, I won’t.
It seems reasonable enough and I wait with bated breath to hear about the outcome of the meeting.
The days pass with interminable slowness, each one feeling more like a week than the mere twenty-four-hour period it is. Filling the time becomes a new challenge, and I realize how easy it is to go out of your mind watching the clock. I try to start the new script, but I’m too jittery and impatient to focus. Instead, I spend the hours in front of the television, jumping from Law & Order to Love & Valor to Judge Judy to Dr. Phil back to Law & Order.
One morning I catch a marathon of The Real Housewives of Orange County and in a matter of seconds, I’m hooked.
The day of the meeting finally arrives and I check my watch every ten minutes and think, They could be meeting now. Or, they could be done meeting now. Or, Lloyd could have the money now.
Lester doesn’t call, which isn’t a surprise, so I give him a day and call myself. He tells me it’s way too soon to hear anything. He promises to call as soon as he gets word.
This is unacceptable, so I dash off an e-mail to Nadia in Lloyd’s office. I keep it brief, only asking if she heard anything about how the meeting went and making fun of myself for not being able to wait patiently for the information to trickle down to me.
Nadia answers immediately, which I realize is a bad sign. Whenever there’s something worthwhile to pass on, she ignores me completely.
Sure enough, she confirms my worst suspicions: The meeting has been postponed four weeks.
Deflated, I turn off the television and stare at the blank screen, wondering how the hell I’m going to get through the next four weeks. The last one almost killed me.
Maybe I should go away, hop on the first flight to a faraway place like Billings, Montana, or Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and spend the three weeks trying to get back to L.A. I could take Greyhound or hitchhike. After a while I might even lose track of the days. Maybe somewhere near Laramie, I’ll find an adorable clapboard house among the purple hills and fall in love with the simple beauty of a wide-open sky. I’ll get a job keeping books for an ornery rancher and go to barn dances on Friday nights.
I picture myself in overalls and a bandana with hay in my hair and know it won’t work. Clapb
oard houses are for weekends in the country with your boyfriend or children. Real life happens only during the week. No movie has ever been green-lighted on a Sunday afternoon.
Three o’clock rolls around but I don’t turn on Love & Valor, even though I’m dying to know if Jinx shoots Giovanni in the sting operation before she realizes who he is. This is serious. I have to come up with a plan. I can’t just do nothing.
I consider my options.
I can do nothing until the investor meeting convenes in January. This would require calling Tulk and seeing if Joshua Smallweed is cool with waiting at least four weeks for an answer. The advantages to this are: Smallweed might find other backers in the interim and not need my money anymore; I get to avoid making a decision. The disadvantages are obvious: Smallweed could get impatient or lose interest; the investor meeting might get postponed again. Based on the epic slowness with which all decisions regarding J&J are made, there’s no reason to assume the meeting will take place before Easter, or even at all. I could be marking time for the rest of my life.
Or I could make the decision myself.
It’s a terrifying thought and the pain in my stomach instantly returns.
Still, there’s no way around it. The postponement is the universe telling me I need to be accountable for my own life. I can’t keep abdicating responsibility.
More than a little freaked out (and nauseous), I sit at my computer and start Googling. I begin with Joshua Smallweed. His credentials check out—that is, he worked on Imagine and Dreamworks films—but are less impressive than Tulk made them sound. Aside from The King in the Parlor, for which he is listed as associate producer, all his credits are minor assistant-tos or post-production-advisors. His bio on Solution’s website lists movies for which IMDB doesn’t credit him. I don’t know what that means.
I can’t find any press announcing the formation of his production company except on his site but that doesn’t seem strange to me. A hundred such companies must form every day in college dorm rooms and theater workshop basements. There’s even another Solution Pictures, in the UK. The three principals are West End actors trying to breakout of jukebox musicals. I understand completely how they feel.
Next I look up Ed Burns and confirm that he sank his own money into his first movie. From there it’s easy to find other examples of filmmakers who scrounged money from anyone they could—parents, uncles, high school teachers—to pull together enough to finish their project. It’s an age-old story. Just like Tulk said.
Mel Gibson personally funded The Passion of Christ. Different scale, same thing.
The pain in my stomach intensifies. I don’t want to do this.
I spend the rest of the day and most of the night maniacally Googling anything that seems the least bit relevant. I check out Hilary Swank. She did indeed make $3,000 for Boys Don’t Cry. It’s not the same as putting up your own money but there are similarities. It’s about sacrificing for the future, suffering now in the hope of a better tomorrow.
By three a.m., I’m convinced I have to do this. I can’t believe in myself less than Hilary Swank. I saw all her episodes on 90210, in which she played a single mom and Steve’s girlfriend. She was so awful, Tori Spelling looked like a Shakespearean genius in comparison.
But she knew better. In some deep, dark recess of her soul, she believed she had Academy Award performances inside her. She believed it so strongly that she gave up money and comfort to get it. She chose the hard road because she wanted it badly enough.
How could I do anything less?
Days 1,310 through 1,318
I wake with second thoughts and spend the entire day, then week, making and unmaking my mind. Christmas passes in a haze of vacillation. Yes, I’ll invest the money. No, I won’t invest the money.
Several times I find myself on the brink of asking Simon but I always stop myself because I know exactly what he’ll say. Be cautious. Be prepared. Don’t get hurt. Don’t take risks. The discussion would probably culminate in huge argument in which he tells me I’m crazy to even think of investing my money in a film.
I know I’m crazy. I just need him to tell that me crazy’s OK.
I also can’t talk about it with my family. Sometimes I think Carrie would understand. When she bought her apartment on Fourteenth Street, she didn’t just buy a place to put her stuff, she bought a piece of the future, a belief that the world will turn out the way she expects. She’s betting that Al Qaeda won’t wipe out the financial district or that global warming won’t submerge Manhattan under twelve feet of water. She took a risk, too.
But I know she won’t see it that way, and when she calls to give me the details of her visit with Glenn, I realize I don’t want to talk to her about anything. The road trip from San Francisco to Los Angeles has morphed into a week in L.A. with day trips to Santa Barbara and Ojai. Glenn isn’t into the road-trip experience. He’s about the destination, not the journey.
She explains this matter-of-factly, as if he’s not the kind of person she used to make fun of. Carrie thrives on long, leisurely drives. She loves stopping to savor the view, then spending the rest of the afternoon watching the sun move across the sky.
The more she goes on about the things Glenn wants to do, the more cut off from her I feel, and I make an excuse to get off the phone as quickly as possible. I love my sister but I’m not so keen on Glenn’s girlfriend. That sneaky rat has even convinced her to eschew the bright red cabinets she loves for tasteful ashwood ones to ensure the resale value of the apartment. I can just see him counting his half of the proceeds.
I have no idea how I’m going to get through an entire week with evil groping octopus hands. Poor Simon is going to have to spend every waking hour with us. Good thing he likes my sister.
Lester is the obvious person to talk to, but he doesn’t know that I’m working with another agent and I’m not sure how the information would go down. I probably should have told him before I gave the script to Tulk to sell but it felt so unlikely that he’d find any takers that I didn’t seem worth the awkwardness that would ensue. Whatever did or didn’t happen with Tad Johnson, we’d still have to work together on J&J.
Now that Tad Johnson is going somewhere, I regret my cowardice. I’d love to get his input on the matter.
Not that I can’t predict what he’d say, too. Lester’s only interest in the big payday. Never once has he shown interest in growing my career or building my reputation. The very idea of investing money rather than making it is repellent to him. In the Vanity Fair article, he said the mere thought gave him hives.
No, the only person I can talk about the offer with is Harry.
He wants to take me out for that celebratory dinner at Spago, but I insist on lunch at a diner on Sunset. Dinner is too much like a date. Lunch is friends on the go catching up during a meal. It’s entirely harmless.
I fully intend to break up with him but I’m not sure if I should do it before or after I get his take on the Solution’s deal. I don’t want his feelings about the split to inform his opinion. What if he’s so devastated he can’t think clearly? Or if he’s so angry he gives me bad advise out of spite?
But it seems too calculating to bide my time until I get what I want.
That’s what manipulative people do.
Harry spends most of the meal talking about his trip to Chicago—the shopping was spectacular and he can’t wait to show me his new flat-screen TV—and I listen, relieved that I don’t have to decide anything just yet.
It’s not until the check arrives that he asks about me. “And just in case you think I’ve forgotten about it, let me assure you now that I’m dying to know what happened with Solution Pictures and have only gone on about myself to tactfully give you a chance to bring it up on your own.”
As soon as he mentions Solution, I realize
I’m going to be calculating.
Sighing deeply, I lean my head against the pink Naugahyde of the booth. “They want me to come on board as a producer and invest fifty thousand dollars for the privilege.”
“Yikes,” he says.
I look at him out of the corner of my eye. “It’s crazy, right?”
“I didn’t say that. Tell me more about the deal. Who’s behind it?”
I tell him what I know about Joshua Smallweed and Solution Pictures. We talk about Abel Fiero and the thirty-one-day shooting schedule. As I run through the details, I can hear the doubt in my voice and the desperation to overcome it. I make the argument for as if I’m trying to convince myself it’s a good idea.
It’s terrifying.
The bottom line: I’m not brave enough for this. I should take that as my final answer and move on.
Harry listens quietly, nodding solemnly and only interrupting once to have me clarify a point. When I’m done, he leans back and stares at me. “The question is,” he says finally, “do you believe in the script?”
“Yes,” I say.
“Do you believe in yourself?”
That’s the million dollar question. How do you know if you believe in yourself? Just because you like what you do doesn’t mean anyone else will. A work’s value is in the eye of the beholder. There is no universal good.
I hesitate too long.
“Come on, Ricki,” Harry says. “Do you believe in yourself?”
“Yes.”
But the lone syllable comes out more like a question than an answer, and he rejects it on the spot. “You get one more chance. Do you believe in yourself?”
“Yes,” I say, my tone emphatic.