Either You're in or You're in the Way

by Logan Miller

  We drove out to the country and visited our filming locations. We walked around Lunny Quarry—where Mac and the brothers work—climbed on the conveyor and rock crusher, sat in the tractors and other machinery, talked about the movie as the grit and dust settled Evan into the environment.

  We told Evan that we didn’t want anybody else to play Mac but him. We expressed Mac’s importance to the movie, his comedy and humor, the contrast of his personality to the soft-spoken Brownie (another one of the brothers’ friends), how Mac provides an offset to the brothers’ determination and seriousness.

  Evan asked us, “What’s been the most difficult part so far?”

  “Raising the money.”

  But of course, we hadn’t raised it yet. And of course, we couldn’t let him or our casting directors or anyone else know this dark secret.

  In the fast approaching future, contracts would need to be signed, checks written for actors. Money would need to start flowing from our hands to other people’s hands in exchange for goods and services.

  It felt like we were slowly committing suicide.

  We dropped Evan off at the airport. We would start rehearsing in a few weeks.

  We should’ve been put in straitjackets.

  DANCING AROUND THE FIRES OF GREED

  WE HAD A conference call with a prospective investor the next day. He was some big shot lawyer who had apparently made fortunes in litigation. Prior to the call, we tried to anticipate the questions he might ask, put ourselves in his legal shoes, think about his motivations for investing.

  He was a lawyer. He would surely ask the tough questions, search for inconsistencies. And he did, for two hours…

  “Tell me about the movie.”

  We started our pitch with the usual cautionary preface. We told him that moviemaking was a speculative investment and that it’s hard to find a riskier vehicle to sink money into. In fact, it’s not even an investment, it’s a gamble. Historically, it’s hard to find worse. We were always up front with people about the hazards of investing in a movie. After listing all the pitfalls one might encounter even under the most thorough and exacting plan, we shifted gears and discussed some of the rosier dimensions of our movie, specifically, the investment opportunities. Remember, with enormous risk comes enormous upside. There’s always a trade-off.

  He started interrogating us with all the craft and sagacity of a hardened litigator, trying to draw out discrepancies in our pitch, expose inconsistencies in our business plan, reveal flaws in the investment structure. We assumed that such a thorough interrogation and expenditure of time from a man who bills out at $500/hour was a strong indication of his desire to invest.

  There was a path to his questioning, a continuous chain of logic. He was quick of thought, quick to interrupt with another, deeper, more probing question, an extension to the one we were trying to answer. His intensity grew and his approach began to change. His freedom increased; his freedom to analyze and inquire, as though he were playing a new game. It was a blend of disciplined legal scrutiny and freewheeling street hustle, and as the conversation swelled and heated, his native tendencies and speculative desires fevered like a man on a hot streak at a back alley dice game.

  We were his amusement for the day, a sideshow to break up the monotony of legal work, orally juggling his questions, tight-roping through the ignorant areas, swallowing the sharp questions and pulling out smooth answers while he, the circus master, barked orders and gestured fervently with his hands.

  And the more excited he got, the more excited we got. Each question stoked our enthusiasm, and each answer stoked his, until we were all dancing around a bonfire of naked celebrity and movie madness. The flames licked and scorched our desires and his lust. We were three demons throwing fuel onto the inferno, swinging arm in arm around the blaze, howling and conspiring on our soon-to-be-famous deeds and imminent fortunes!

  He then started name dropping. He had influential friends, men of high standing and high dollars, lions of the banking and computer industry. For all we knew he had the ear of Rupert Murdoch and held Warren Buffet’s purse strings. We’d found our investor. The possibilities were intoxicating. Free at last, free at last, thank God almighty we’re free at last to make our movie!

  This was the one. This was the guy we’d been searching for. He talked about how electric the entire process of making a movie must be, how he’s a big fan of the arts, how this is the type of investment he’s been looking for, something that generated more than just money. He wanted us to meet his wife, wanted us over for dinner. Maybe he’d betroth a daughter to us.

  So with our confidence flaming, white-hot now—he was ours—we asked the question that had been looming in our minds, the only question that really mattered.

  “How much are you thinking of investing?”

  By the way he was talking we figured he’d be good for at least 500 grand. Earlier, he had bragged about recently winning a $25 million settlement. Industry standard for his cut was 30 percent. He’d need a tax write-off for that windfall. And we were that exciting vehicle, or so we thought.

  He became silent. A tense silence, as if we’d just kicked out his stained glass window. Then he began to speak, haltingly, squirming.

  “If I was going to invest.”

  He placed considerable stress on the “if” and every “if” after that. No one was going to pin down this crafty pettifogger.

  “…If I was going to invest…If…If…If…” He paused. “At the very most I would invest, remember, this is if I invest…would be somewhere between…” He paused again. A longer silence. He exhaled. “Remember, this is IF I was going to invest.”

  “Yes, we get the ‘if’…We get the if. HOW MUCH?!”

  “50 to 100…thousand…At most.”

  He didn’t even say dollars.

  Fifty to one hundred thousand dollars sounds like a lot of money. And it is. But we needed several million. It would take twenty to forty nut-ticklers like him to bankroll our movie. That could take a lifetime to round up. Literally. Might as well hold a bake sale. Make brownies and chocolate chip cookies from now until the sun dies.

  We hung up.

  NO RALPH IN THIS NADIR

  We’d reached the bottom. It felt like the bonfire jubilee with the attorney on that stifling afternoon in a room with no windows was the reading of our death sentence.

  HANG THOSE TWINS FROM THE GALLOWS!

  We weren’t sleeping at night. We couldn’t live with failure. All our ships were torched. We were barely sixty days from shooting and we had no money. We had everyone committed and ready to go. A million dollars’ worth of contracts and commitments—and we had NO MONEY! Zip. We didn’t even have the prospects of money. And this asshole attorney was wasting our time!—marching us up the steps to the rope.

  It was a Minsky Moment. We were leveraged to the hilt. Our credit cards maxed. We had a good thing going and it was ALL about to collapse. Our demise would be infamous, a parable told in Hollywood about what not to do—a cautionary tale of unrestrained ambition. Our careers over before they started.

  Noah said, “I’m so tired of begging for a chance, begging for an opportunity.”

  We needed to get out of the house and hit a workout, get the blood moving, endorphins pumping.

  On the drive to lift weights, we thought about Dad, how he had died with nothing—an “indigent” according to the state. And it pissed us off. We felt like we were heading in the same direction.

  Our movie wasn’t going to happen.

  We hit the iron hard in our friend Jasha’s garage, throwing weights around in a 105-degree mechanic shop, breathing in the gasoline and oil fumes from dismantled hot rods. We blasted Judas Priest. The tension was primal. Jasha’s pitbull hid under a fender leaning against the wall. She could feel the rage.

  THERE’S GOLD IN THE JUNK

  We drove home, dreading the return. It was 8:30 P.M., June 13. Logan started cooking dinner.

  “Hey, Bro, I’m gonna clean
up our bulk e-mail folder on Yahoo,” Noah said. “Delete all of them.”

  “Why?”

  “’Cause we haven’t cleaned them out in a few months…Probably got a couple hundred junk e-mails…It’s not good for the computer, slows things down.”

  Why tonight? Who knows? But Noah felt compelled to erase the junk e-mails. Perhaps this trivial and mindless task would give him a sense of accomplishment. We didn’t feel like we were in control of much right now and deleting the Penis Enlargement spam was something we could control, sort of like pulling cyber weeds. It’s why people garden.

  Noah opened the bulk e-mail folder on Yahoo and started deleting: Click, delete, click, delete, click, delete…

  Noah stopped. One of the e-mails was titled “Winston.” (The working title of Touching Home.) Noah didn’t recognize the sender’s name. First he thought: How does some Nigerian spammer know about our movie?

  Then he thought it might be a conspiracy: Is this a trap from the Hollywood agents? He looked around the room, suspicious, as if being watched.

  “Bro, come here.”

  Logan left the kitchen and walked into the room.

  “You recognize this name?” Noah asked.

  “No.”

  “Should we open it?”

  “It could be a virus, blow up our computer.”

  “Let’s open it. Who cares?”

  We opened the e-mail. Here’s what it said:

  Are you still looking for money?

  Brian C. Vail

  That’s it, the entire e-mail. No introduction, no “Hello, I’m Brian from Anywhere, USA, I’m a friend of so and so,” or “This person told me to contact you about your movie.”

  It was strange. Why didn’t he introduce himself?

  We ran a search on the e-mail address, tracked it to a company server in Sacramento.

  The only person we knew in Sacramento was Honest Pete Deterding.

  In late-May, Pete had sent us an e-mail:

  had an interesting conversation. too early to give details. i’ll keep you informed.

  We hadn’t thought much about Pete’s e-mail until now.

  Are you still looking for money?

  Our reply:

  Yes…

  We called Pete at 6 A.M. the following morning. He’s in construction. He gets up early.

  “Do you know a guy named Brian Vail?”

  “Yeah, that’s the guy I was referring to in the e-mail a while back.”

  “He sent us an e-mail last night. It was kinda weird. He didn’t introduce himself or anything, just asked us if we were still looking for money.”

  “Great. He’s a busy guy. Call him.”

  Never wait for a phone call. So we called Brian Vail and left a message. “We’re the movie guys. We believe we got an e-mail from you…You can call us back at…”

  Our cell phone rang at 11 A.M. It was Brian. The reception was terrible and we lost the call after a few seconds. We ran over to our home line and called back.

  “Hey, guys,” Brian said. “Someone gave me a DVD of your trailer and a business plan.”

  “Pete Deterding?”

  “No, I think it was someone else…” He paused. “Curtis Rapton, yeah, that’s who gave it to me.”

  Pete had given a DVD of our trailer and business plan to his friend Curtis Rapton. A week later, Curtis went golfing with Brian and told him about our project. Brian said he’d like to take a look at it.

  Brian watched our trailer, read our business plan, and now we were talking.

  He continued, “Why don’t you guys schedule an appointment with my secretary to come up to the office next time you’re in Northern California…Where are you guys, L.A.?”

  “We’ve been going back and forth quite a bit lately…But we’re in Northern California now.”

  “Well, there’s no rush.”

  But we were rushing. Brian’s interest level seemed lukewarm; at least that’s how he came across. But then again, all the real money men—the guys that actually have the big bucks and balls—appear that way at first, especially when they’re a whale and you’re a guppy.

  He transferred us to his secretary.

  “What’s your schedule like?” she asked.

  “How’s tomorrow?”

  “Uhm…Let me see. No, Brian can’t do it tomorrow. He’s booked.”

  Today was Thursday.

  “What about Monday?” we asked.

  “…Brian has an opening Tuesday morning at eleven…and in the afternoon at—”

  “Eleven is perfect.”

  It was the longest weekend of our lives. We were the only guys in the working world praying for Monday to come quick. To all those people whose weekend felt mysteriously short, we apologize.

  WE DIDN’T COME HERE TO FUCKING BARBECUE

  WE SLEPT AT Bao’s house in Sacramento on Monday night before the meeting. (Bao is Chau’s brother, the woman who came to the Castro Theatre with us the night we ambushed Ed Harris. Bao is one of our best friends.) Sleeping at his house guaranteed we wouldn’t be late. If our car broke down on the drive up there, we could ride the bus, walk, or hitchhike to Brian’s office and still make it on time for our meeting Tuesday morning.

  Brian’s assistant escorted us down the hallway and into his office. The place was decorated with abstract sculptures and paintings. We had rehearsed our pitch all weekend. We were juiced.

  Brian, and his CFO Mike Walker, stood up and shook our hands. They were in their early forties, wearing khakis and collared shirts. We got the feeling they weren’t trying to impress anyone. They knew real estate, and they were damn good at it.

  Brian and Mike are a contrast of personalities. Brian is high-strung, preoccupied, always moving, processes information with frightening speed. Mike is reserved, composed, an ex-marine with the core tattooed on his forearm. His contracts are impressively lucid and concise, with a skill in legal brevity that most attorneys lack. And he ain’t even an attorney. They’re a devastating team.

  Mike doesn’t sleep at night so Brian can.

  “I hope you guys don’t mind,” Brian said. “But I got another guy that’s going to join us in our meeting.”

  “Yeah, sure,” we said.

  It was his office. Who were we to tell him no? We figured it was another one of his employees. But it wasn’t.

  So the mystery guest walks in, fifteen minutes late, yapping on his cell phone, cool as iced lemonade on a hot summer day. He’s got bling and pinky rings, a silk shirt, and gator-skin shoes; he might’ve been moonwalking above the carpet.

  It turns out he’s also a filmmaker, and by his own account, a very talented one, a rising star, someone to look out for. Let’s call him “Iced Lemonade.”

  So Brian shows Iced Lemonade our two-minute trailer on the TV behind his desk, the trailer that’s been getting everyone hot, melting fools.

  Iced Lemonade watches, doesn’t say a thing, nods and then sits down next to us.

  Brian says, “Yo, Iced Lemonade, why don’t you tell the Brothers here a little about your movie.”

  “Well, you see we shot dis movie, you see, and it’s da shit. You know what I’m saying?”

  We didn’t have a clue.

  Iced continued yapping and didn’t stop for thirty minutes. For thirty minutes straight he bragged about how his movie is “da shit” and “my skillz” and on and on and on about what we needs to do to makes our movie “da shit” like his. And how he gots all these peoples wanting to give him millionzez for his next picture, and about how heez and Brians gonna raise fifteen millionzez to build a sound stage in Sacramento. (That’s this much: $15,000,000.)

  Meanwhile, Brian grabbed his putter and a golf ball and started putting around the room as Iced Lemonade, that prophet of moviemaking, rapped and rapped and rapped, and Mike sat stone as a Stoic.

  We kept silent. To start rapping with him would only discredit us. Drinking the lemonade right now would’ve been like drinking the Kool-Aid.

  This meet
ing was another dead end. Once again, we were someone’s entertainment.

  And the clock kept ticking.

  For ten more minutes.

  And Brian kept putting.

  While Lemonade poured knowledge.

  As Mike sat silent with his marine sniper’s stare.

  And we boiled in the mockery of the scene.

  Brian was our last chance to secure the financing before the movie would be called off. And now, sitting there in his office watching this bizarre spectacle, our hopes were bludgeoned. Our optimism crushed.

  We had given up. We were now out for blood. In a few seconds we were going to pick up Iced Lemonade by his saggy pants, rob him of his bling, and go Viking on his ass, when Brian set the putter against the wall, and said:

  “Thanks, Iced Lemonade. That was great. We all appreciate it. I’m going to need you to leave the room now. We’re going to talk business.”

  And that’s when Noah put his fist on Brian’s desk and said, “No shit. We didn’t come here to fucking barbecue!”

  The room slammed to silence.

  Iced Lemonade walked out the door and things got cool.

  Brian sat down, looked at Mike. Mike looked at him. There was a smile hidden behind their faces, as if Noah said what they wanted to say but their business etiquette muzzled them.

  “Well, all right,” Brian said. “Let’s get down to business.”

  Mike placed a yellow notepad on the desk and removed a pen from his shirt pocket.

  “Are you interested in investing in our movie or not?” Noah asked.

  “I wouldn’t have contacted you if I wasn’t.”

  “What was that guy all about?” Logan asked. “He doesn’t know his head from his ass.” Frustration was polluting our manners. But maybe there was something in our candor that made a good impression.

  Brian had apparently given Lemonade some money and felt Lemonade was mismanaging it. He’d called Iced Lemonade into the meeting to sort of “put him in check. He’d see your professionalism and realize how things are supposed to be done.” But Brian’s method didn’t work. The problem was his method depended on Iced Lemonade having a rational mind. He didn’t expect Lemonade to sour himself so easily.