by Davis Bunn
But compared to Sam Menzes and the combined power of Galaxy Studios, this almost-ran and the Nashville company backing his movie were a minor nuisance at best.
Even so, a girl on the rise couldn’t be complacent.
Which was what she had repeatedly told herself on the drive over. But truth be told, another big reason for coming here was morbid curiosity. After all, when would she have another chance to see a man trying to rise from a Hollywood grave?
The man at the podium was a veteran of battles Shari didn’t even want to think about, with a voice and scars to match. She could smell dust and fresh paint and a vague body odor, as though the foulness of past mistakes emanated from the gathering. The speaker with his raspy grit-encrusted voice unsettled her. He spoke about God as if the two of them had survived the same war. He used words that never entered her normal life—words like suffering, deliverance, enduring, patience, redemption. Shari shifted in her uncomfortable metal chair and stifled an urge to yell at him to shut up, get a life, put a sock in it, whatever.
Then it was over. The suddenness caught her completely by surprise. Which was why Shari was unprepared when Brent Stark turned her way.
His gaze filled her with a perverse shiver. She knew so much about him. He, on the other hand, saw just another woman hiding in plain sight behind her Max Mara shades.
Even so, he held her with a knowing stare. The intensity seemed capable of reaching beneath her calm mask and wrenching out her motives. Shari broke the look by rising and heading for the door. She had the ridiculous sensation of his eyes boring into her back. Which she knew was absurd.
When she reached the door, she could not help but turn back.
Brent Stark was still watching.
Jerry Orbain arrived in Los Angeles bearing a set of DVDs and an attitude. Brent drove them back to a hotel booked by Fiona, Bobby Dupree’s secretary. It was a sixties-style two-story affair whose one major asset was its location—just off Sunset in Bel-Air, two blocks from the north-south interstate. Recent renovations had broken down walls, doubling the room size. Brent’s room was on the upper level, overlooking a postage-stamp garden and pool. It was the sort of place filled with film wannabes and indies struggling to survive on the fringe. Back in his fat days, Brent would have avoided the place at all costs. Hollywood was all about image, location, and status. This place had none of them. Brent liked it just fine.
Brent borrowed a DVD player from the front desk and played three episodes from Jerry’s work. Brent did not need to see three hours’ worth of television drama. But he did it just the same.
Jerry had directed two shows—one through two seasons, the second through three. It was a good starting position for a new director. Which was the first thing Brent said when the final program ended. Jerry responded with silence, staring at the empty screen, avoiding looking at Brent.
“With anybody else,” Brent went on, “I would have watched the first act of one, the second of another, and the climax from the third. I would have asked my colleague to summarize the plot and point out what I needed to see. But I was concerned you might not give me what I needed. Would you?”
Jerry rose from his chair. “Is there anything to drink?”
“Coke and ginger ale in the fridge.”
Jerry walked over and opened the mini-fridge door. The harsh LA sunlight formed a jagged frame along the base of the window curtains. “Bobby should have given me your job. I earned it. I brought them Candace Chen’s Long Hunter script. I helped them set up the company. A year and a half I’ve been putting this together. It’s mine.”
“I appreciate your being honest about this,” Brent said, and meant it. “Do you think it would make any difference if I quit?”
Jerry popped the top. “Probably not.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Couldn’t tell you. Bobby hasn’t even said why I didn’t get the job in the first place.”
“But you’ve worked with him for eighteen months. Make a guess.”
“Because he doesn’t know the business!” Steam vented as he spoke. “He doesn’t know what it’s like to work on drama when you’re given a budget of a quarter of a mil per television hour!”
Brent made no effort to disguise his astonishment. “You shot that for two hundred fifty thousand an episode?”
“They cut the budget on me. To the bone.”
“That’s amazing work, Jerry.”
He guzzled his ginger ale. “I know.”
“No, I mean it. I would have guessed twice that, maybe more.” Brent ran through the sequences in his mind. “Untrained no-name actors. No rewrite time. How’d you keep down the overhead?”
“We shot at Biola. Ever heard of the place?”
“Sure. The Bible college.”
“They’ve got a great arts program. We used their sound stages, hired a lot of students as apprentices and worked them like they were full-timers.We rehearsed forever, so when the cameras and the lights were brought in, we were more than ready.”
Brent heard the pride in Jerry’s voice. And understood why. “You did good work.”
“That’s right.” Jerry met his gaze for the first time. “I did.”
“But you’ve said it yourself. Bobby won’t give you the top director slot. Is there anybody you’d rather work with than me?”
Jerry stared at the drink in his hand. “I haven’t thought about that.”
“While I was still in Bobby’s office, I asked God for two signs. It looks like He has given me both of them.” Brent told him briefly about his contact with the two ladies.
Jerry could not mask his astonishment. “Celia Breach is costarring?”
“We’ll know soon enough. She’s now meeting with Candace Chen.”
“For real?”
“Let’s focus on the here and now, Jerry. I can’t go back to God and say, ‘Wait, I need another sign after you’ve given me what I asked for.’ But it’s how I feel. I need …”
Brent stopped. His chair was pulled up so close to the television his outstretched feet almost touched the stand. It was standard placement for professionals inspecting work, getting so close to the screen the rest of the world was excluded. Close enough that the screen was the world.
He looked down at his hands. His callouses were permanently stained with a mixture of grass and fuel. Not a star’s hands. Not by a long shot.
“I went out to Hawaii both expecting and hoping Candace would shoot me down. I came here as desperate for Celia to ax me as I was for her to say yes. I’ve got a lot more than a director’s slot riding on this project.”
He looked up to discover Jerry staring back at him. Hostile, yes. But listening hard. “My guess is Bobby took these DVDs to somebody in the business. You want to hear what I think they probably said?”
Jerry was probably not much more than thirty-five years old. At that moment, however, he aged twenty years. “Go ahead.”
“The work is good. But it’s not film.” Brent wasn’t sure he was doing the right thing, giving it to him straight. But no other option came to mind. “It’s one thing to handle a television crew of, what, maybe fifteen? Twenty?”
“Try twelve.”
“One camera crew. Three guys on lights and reflectors. You weren’t working union, so no time clock. Long as you finished the episode for that week, you could handle the shooting schedule however you wanted. No-name actors, so no egos. Internal sets. How am I doing, Jerry?”
He drained his can. Crumpled it. Set it down on the counter.
Brent ticked the points on his work-stained fingers. “We’ll have a film crew of sixty-five, maybe seventy. Three full camera teams. One interior stage, possibly two. And two location crews. One will be setting up, the other handling the shoot itself. Do you see where I’m going?”
“You don’t know what the budget is.”
“I don’t need to. I know the story. This is what we’ll require. To stay on budget, we’ll have to work out a production schedule. I’m
thinking a shoot of fifteen weeks. Jerry, think what that means. Even if we run a nonunion shoot, which is what I’m guessing Bobby is after, we’ll be looking at double your entire episode budget for every day we shoot.”
Jerry looked at him then. The hostile veil was gone, at least for the moment.
His own words crawled around Brent’s brain. Every day we shoot.
This thing was happening.
Brent heard the tremor in his voice as he said, “I need an assistant director I can trust, Jerry. You will be off on your own for more than half the shoot, working with the second team.”
“Bobby hasn’t said anything about what role I’d take on the set.”
“Bobby strikes me as open to suggestions. If this is what you want.” Brent pointed at the screen. “I know what you’re thinking. That you have what it takes to shine. And I think you’re right. So the question is, are you willing to give what it takes as my AD, then go on to direct your own production next goround?”
Brent gave Jerry two solid hours with Candace and Celia. He did not join them. Instead, he sat in the shade of the jacaranda tree and worked on three notebooks. One was story. The second was schedule. The third he did not give a name. This third set of issues covered too great a range. If he had been forced to give it a title, he would have called it “Trouble.”
When Brent finally gathered his work, the murmur of voices from inside brought to mind long-ago conversations, when Celia had revealed terse splinters of her past. Celia had cast out the bitter fragments like junk she wanted to leave at the roadside. Her father had been a construction worker injured on the job. Celia had never mentioned her mother at all. She had been born in Reno, a place for which Celia had not a single kind word. As Brent rose from the cedar bench, he recalled how she had once told him that everybody aiming for the big brass ring needed something they hated so bad they’d do whatever it took to never go back again. She might have even said it their last night together. Which was good for another piercing regret.
Brent knocked on the glass door and waited. Celia walked over and said, “It’s been open the whole time.”
“I wanted to give you folks ample warning,” Brent replied, “in case you were talking about me.”
“As a matter of fact.” Celia did not smile. That would have been asking too much. But she did speak without the previous razor edge to her voice. “You want a coffee?”
“If it’s no trouble.”
“It’ll make Manuela’s day, you know that.” Celia did not do the standard Hollywood act of calling out or ringing a buzzer, or if the house was large enough, using the intercom. Instead, she crossed the living room and disappeared into the kitchen. She came back to add, “I asked her to make sandwiches. Anybody vegan or whatever the latest trend is?”
Today Celia wore a plain white T-shirt and stone-washed jeans. No logos, no shoes, no makeup. A rubber band held her hair in strict ponytail order. Her lips were pale in the manner of a Scandinavian blond. Celia displayed an amazing ability to capture the light and possess it. The center stage was wherever she happened to be.
Interestingly, Candace Chen and Jerry Orbain both wore almost identical expressions. The two sat across from one another, staring into their own respective inner space. Both looked shaken to the core—it was hard not to be rocked by a star.
Brent took this as his signal and entered stage left. “Forget the sandwiches. Jerry and I need to be leaving for the airport, and there is something we need to take care of first.”
“Careful there, Brent,” Celia said. “You’re almost sounding like a director.”
“That is the question, isn’t it. Whether I’m going to run this gig.”
“You’re asking us?”
“I sure am.” He smiled his thanks to Manuela. Sipped his coffee. “Two of you I’ve let down in the worst possible way. Jerry wishes I had never surfaced on his radar screen. Each of you have excellent reasons not to speak with me, much less agree to four months of fourteen-hour days. But my God is a mover of mountains and a shaker of the earth’s foundations.”
“Sorry, sport,” Celia said. She reached for the gold box and lighter. “That argument doesn’t work for me.”
“It’s the only one I’ve got,” Brent replied. “It’s the only thing that’s brought me this far. And it’s the only reason I’m here.”
Celia lit up, blew her smoke, observed him carefully. Her eyes were neither blue nor gray, but a mixture all her very own. Cloudy when storms arose, crystal when the moment called for guileless. Brent had played enough closeups with her to half believe the claim that she could change their color at will.
Celia held the moment a beat longer than was comfortable. “You’re saying I have to convert to act?”
“No, Celia. I’m saying we’re going to work together along faith-based lines. We will be honest with each other. Starting here and now. We will strive for harmony and a solid working relationship. We will have no agents on set. Or lawyers. If you have something to say to me, you do it directly. No star tantrums.”
“Wait. I get it. Let me feed you the next line. You’re using this religion thing as a way of cutting my pay?”
Brent saw the narrowing of her gaze, the way her chin jutted, and knew she was preparing for a fight. He nodded at Jerry. “Why don’t you tell them what Bobby told me.”
“All the senior staff will receive the same pay.” Jerry gave them the figure, which was barely above scale. In the film business, the minimums for each top specialist—actor in starring role, screenwriter, director, producer, cinematographer—were set by the guilds. The expectation was that they would negotiate upward from this legal base rate.
Jerry went on, “All senior staff will also receive four percent of the gross after distribution costs.”
Celia was caught in the middle of erupting. “You mean four points of net.”
“He means what he says, Celia.” Producers and financiers were loath to give up points. Net was the best most actors could ever hope for. A cut of net meant a percentage of the film’s earnings after expenses. And in the film business, expenses were a flexible item. Profits from big hits were scaled back by factoring in studio losses from other films. The executive jet could be used one time to bring in the director and star and still have the plane’s annual operating budget charged off a film. Net had another word in the film trade. To those on the receiving end, net was called smoke. As in, vanishing into thin air.
Jerry went on, “The next tier down will receive one percent. Again, this is gross revenue after distribution costs.” The idea of sharing revenue after distribution had often been discussed as a means of halting the scams endemic in the current studio accounting system. But the studios, which made a killing out of promising a share of profits that never appeared, constantly balked at the idea.
Brent said to Jerry, “Now give them the rest.”
“There’s more?” Candace asked.
“Bobby wants all of us to sign a standard corporate contract,” Brent said, watching Jerry. “Tell them.”
“In any other business, an employee has to promise that he won’t compete against the guy paying his salary. Bobby wants to put all of us on a four-year contract. Your pay will be in monthly checks, drawn from the film company. You agree not to compete. As in, no acting for other companies during this period.”
Celia stabbed out her cigarette. “I seem to recall this was tried and killed by the courts.”
“The old system was unfair in the extreme,” Jerry said. “Actors were tied up for seven years, plus whatever time they had on suspension. They were loaned out to other studios and all profits pocketed by the contract holder. They could be fined for nonacceptance of a role.”
“You’ve studied this, have you.”
“Bobby has. His aim is not to cheat but to promote a product and an idea. Value-based entertainment, with actors and actresses known for only these sort of projects.”
“You can go for other roles,” Brent said, “but
only when they don’t conflict, either time-wise or value-wise.”
“And who decides that?”
“For the moment,” Jerry replied, “it’s Bobby. But he’s the king of delegating. He’ll find somebody he can trust and hand it over.”
“Sounds to me like I need to meet this Bobby,” Celia challenged.
“Yes,” Brent said. “You do.”
Candace asked, “You’re telling us this is an all or nothing deal? We sign on for the long run or we don’t play?”
“You’re gonna love this.” Brent motioned to Jerry. “Tell them.”
“Bobby can’t guarantee there’ll be a company beyond this one film. He’s still feeling his way. Since he can’t promise, he can’t expect you to either. He just asks that you’ll enter into the spirit of the agreement.”
“The spirit,” Celia said.
“Yes.”
“Such as,” Brent clarified, “until the film is out and going strong, you won’t take any role that goes against his values-based entertainment.”
“Well, it’s not like I’m drowning in offers over here,” Celia said.
Jerry added, “And you’ll give your word that if the project is a go long-term, you’ll agree to consider signing on.”
“That’s it?”
“Bobby puts a lot of store in giving his word,” Jerry said.
Celia and Candace exchanged a long look. Candace asked, “You believe this?”
“The guy sure isn’t Hollywood,” Celia said.
“No,” Brent agreed. “He’s not.”
“The question is,” Celia said, “can he deliver on the screen?”
Brent stood up. “That’s why we’re here.”
The duo crossed the emerald lawn and climbed back into Brent’s rental car. Jerry looked over the car, back at the house, where Manuela smiled and waved at them before shutting the door. Then he took a long glance at the almost-empty road before sliding into the car and saying, “She thinks the world of you.”