by Novak, Adam;
Dollars: Did Cusack ever do anything nice for you?
Mersault: One night I was at a bar called the Lava Lounge with my best friend and we were about to leave with these drunk stewardesses and one of them looked behind me and said, “Oh my god, it’s John Cusack.” And I said, “Really, where?” Cusack waved us over and bought a round of Heinekens. The stewardesses did not go home with us.
Dollars: What happened to driving Miss Daisy?
Mersault: The last time I saw Daisy James, she gave me the novel Leaving Laughlin as a goodbye present. I told the scary pimps in the Valley they needed a new driver.
Dollars: Did the pimps in Beverly Hills give you a nice office?
Mersault: I wasn’t used to an office environment, so in the beginning I would take my scripts and read them by the pool at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel. When I was done, I’d toss them in the water: the good ones would float, and if they sunk, they stunk. One afternoon I got really sunburned and ditched the chaise lounge for my windowless office on El Habanero Drive.
LEAVING LAUGHLIN
Screenplay by Ben Sanderson
COMMENTS: Bleak, dark, dramatic material that’s strangely life-affirming and compelling. Essentially a two-character piece with Laughlin, Nevada in the background, story revolves around PALE, a terrible alcoholic who comes to Laughlin to drink himself to death only to be temporarily saved by NIKKI, a prostitute who’s living a death wish, too. They turn a trick into a brief relationship that’s at times romantic, grim, and devastating. Script is often explicit in its no-holds-barred depiction of alcoholism and prostitution. That is part of its bitter charm. The characters Pale and Nikki are well-drawn, equals in misery and made for each other. Her life on the streets is as harrowing as his obsession with the bottle. Dialogue is spare, but loaded and honest. Gritty tale about a hooker who wants to save the john is true to its memorable source material (novel by John O’Brien) and might be too dark for the masses but with the right casting this could expand its target audience.
Dollars: So, who died and made you the head of the story department?
Mersault: Nobody died. What happened was, there was this exodus of agents leaving the motion picture department over money and the culture and they were almost all women: Ronnie Almond, Janine Joy, Marlene Mounds, and Annette Raisin. I heard this story how Ronnie Almond bolted from Omniscience after she was mistakenly handed a year-end bonus check for a male agent also named Ronnie that dwarfed what she had ever received from the company. Clients flew out the door to follow their agents down the street to rival agency Insanely Creative Artists. Then, Abbadon happened.
Dollars: That was the nineteen ninety-two Omniscience acquisition of boutique agency Abbadon, led by über-übers Lester Barnes and Arthur Zagnut for their music acts and motion picture client lists.
Mersault: The timing of my promotion as staff reader was exquisite. Lester Barnes represented DQ, one of the biggest movie stars in the world. Zagnut represented John Travolta, Patrick Swayze, and Whitney Houston. The music department had a license to print money, representing Nirvana and Pearl Jam and Perry Farrell’s Lollapalooza. Our new worldwide head of the motion picture department, Lester Barnes, needed a reader and that became my job. Every script I read for DQ typically began with the character described as ruggedly handsome and every other script I read was a Die Hard knockoff: Die Hard on a date, Die Hard at the Post Office, Die Hard in a closet (that one was called Coat Hanger). There was even a script at Warner Brothers that was Die Hard in a skyscraper. I read The Rock, but not for DQ. I forget who I read it for, maybe Sam Elliott.
Dollars: If you only read garbage, how come you didn’t leave Omniscience?
Mersault: I didn’t read garbage every day, I read cream. Being the in-house staff reader for Omniscience meant I mostly evaluated studio pictures and firm offers. Then the head of the story department resigned and I was the only one in the building running the place while the agency interviewed outside candidates to become the new department head. For a week I was assigning overnight coverage and acting like the boss to all the outside readers. The assistant I inherited told me to go across the street for a meeting with the head of business affairs and the head of the motion picture literary department. I called my dad first to tell him they were probably going to offer me the position as head of the story department, and ask him, if they did offer the job, should I take it? Dad said, “Son, up is up.” So I went to the office of the literary department honcho and the agent said, “Look, this job will drive you crazy. You’re going to have to hire and fire people, manage the agent trainees, and still write coverage yourself.” The head lawyer said, “You don’t want this job. We know you write scripts. Maybe one day the agency will represent you.” I asked them if they were offering me the job and they said, “Yes.” I said, very fast: “ThankyouverymuchIaccept,” and ran out of that office. Up was up.
TEA IN THE SAHARA
Screenplay by Samantha Strong
COMMENTS: Well-written historical drama painted on a large canvas with memorable characters caught in a tragic love story that turns out to be as involving as a mystery. Set during WWII, at a villa that’s been converted into a hospital, a badly burned patient is brought to the care of emotionally fragile nurse NANA. Through well-constructed flashbacks, we learn about the emotionally-packed love story of PIERRE and the married AIMEE during an international expedition in nineteen thirty-nine North Africa. When their affair is discovered, Aimee’s husband tries to kill them all with his plane, but he only kills himself and wounds Aimee. Tragically, when Pierre is forced to leave Aimee in a cave while he goes for help, he is captured by soldiers who suspect him to be German and Aimee is dead by the time he returns to the cave. Under Nana’s care, Pierre encourages her to help him commit suicide. Richly realized script smartly offers strong subplots that add narrative and emotional layers: the angry Intelligence officer PISTACHIO, maimed by the Germans, suspects Pierre is a Nazi spy and debates killing him; Nana herself is given a heartbroken past (through flashbacks) and a light romance with an Indian, VINDALOO, that touches on interracial dynamics. Sometimes it feels like there’s too much going on here, and the question of whether Pierre is a spy or not doesn’t play as important as the Pierre-Aimee love story. There’s a lot to resolve here, fortunately this material succeeds in spinning a gripping, romantic tale. Dialogue is excellent, intelligent, thoughtful. Characterizations are well-drawn, layered, distinct; each role could be either a showcase turn or memorable support. With its leisurely pacing, nonlinear structure, and subtle character, this feels slightly against the mainstream grain. But it is a love story that works on a universal level that resonates with a powerful chord. It’s a strong narrative, well told, with stunning desert vistas that make this material special and deserving of our attention.
BOX OF CHOCOLATES
Screenplay by Louis Broth
COMMENTS: Winning, amusing comedy with fantasy elements about MILTON QWIRTZ, a mentally challenged man who relates his rather incredible, illustrious, and fulfilling life experiences to perfect strangers at a bus stop. Not unlike Chauncey Gardner in BEING THERE, Milton’s life is filled with misunderstandings and fortuitous events. As the script covers the fifties, sixties, seventies, and eighties, Milton has memorable encounters with famous real people such as ELVIS, KENNEDY, MARTIN LUTHER KING, CHAIRMAN MAO, the BLACK PANTHERS, the WATERGATE BURGLARS, and NIXON. Script also successfully employs, without overdoing it, Milton’s unusual point of view in which surreal visions occasionally appear. Simply told, the script unfolds through flashbacks and while this back-and-forth structure occasionally feels awkward, still manages to make this overused narrative device work. Packed with memorable moments, strong dialogue, and a signature role for DQ, this is a completely character-driven story of a life lived well.
I HEART SHAKESPEARE
Screenplay by Alexander Dobreanu
EVALUATION: This is a charming, romantic script abou
t Shakespeare and the woman who broke his heart. WILL SHAKESPEARE starts a new play, ROMEO & JULIET, as a comedy. But when he falls in love with LINDA DE BESSUPS, a lady in waiting whose hand has been given to a scoundrel named ESSEX, Will finds himself, and his play, changing for the better. Linda agrees to marry Essex only after he threatens to shut down Will’s theatre. Inspired by his pain and heartbreak, ROMEO & JULIET becomes a tragedy. The concept is brilliant and supported by a first-rate execution. The Elizabethan dialogue works well, accompanied by the sheer poetry of Shakespeare’s own words. Characters are rich and believable. This well-written screenplay should appeal to directors, stars, and audiences alike. Unabashedly romantic, funny, and dramatic, the Bard himself would appreciate this lovestruck fantasy.
Dollars: Running the Omniscience story department sounds like this amazing job where you can take a script and do anything, with this incredible access to agents, movie stars, producers, and directors.
Mersault: You have to be judicious with that access. I didn’t really know how much goodwill I actually had inside the motion picture department until I fell in love with this script called The Grey Area written by a director client named Franklin Brauner and his wife. Their agent told me to call them after I’d read it and take them out to lunch. I hit the couch, closed the door, and finished reading their script in one sitting, always a good sign. I didn’t need to throw this script into the pool to see if it would float or sink. I knew I had gold. When I told this older agent I was meeting the director Franklin Brauner, he snorted contemptuously and asked if I’d been to his house in the hills yet? His knowing wink suggested I could expect to take part in an unwanted orgy. I rented Franklin Brauner’s movies so I could be familiar with his work before we met. His last produced credit was this nineteen eighty-nine cult movie White of the Eye that got a limited theatrical release. In the seventies, Franklin Brauner directed this trippy, Kubrickian science-fiction movie called Demon Seed with Julie Christie trapped in her automated house controlled by an artificially intelligent computer who impregnates her to create a diabolical offspring. Then I watched Franklin Brauner’s debut film Performance, starring Mick Jagger, a hallucinatory film made in the late sixties that played like two movies: The first half was a British gangster film about a mob enforcer that seemed to be the inspiration for Reservoir Dogs with its funny criminal talk and explosive violence. The second half was a drug-fueled romp in a London flat owned by a reclusive rock star, where the gangster lays low from a contract put out on his life. Jagger played a version of himself, a libertine named Turner with two concubines doing him and magic mushrooms all day and all night. There was a line from Mick Jagger in the movie that perfectly described Franklin Brauner’s filmography: “The only performance that makes it, that really makes it all the way, is madness.” So, having prepped for my meeting with Franklin Brauner and his wife, our lunch was a love fest and they invited me afterwards to go to the movies with them and I think we saw Kies´lowski’s Blue together, followed by an invitation to dinner at Café Des Artistes because they needed a fourth to join them. When I sat down at their table, Mick Jagger, wearing a purple sweater, asked me to pass the bread basket. Eventually, I struck up a conversation with Mick regarding my uncle’s historical novel about the famous hypnotist Anton Mesmer because I remembered his movie company Jagged Films once inquired about the film rights. Mick suggested they adapt the book for Franklin to direct. The next day, when I told my mom I had dinner with Mick Jagger, there was this pause, and she said, “Yeah right, and tomorrow you’re having breakfast with Keith Richards.”
THE GREY AREA
Screenplay by Franklin Brauner & Asia King
COMMENTS: Erotic, dark thriller with razor-sharp characters thrust into bent situations that force them to reexamine their lives. Heavily in debt, bank official LULU LOPEZ moonlights as a high-class call girl and becomes involved with charismatic money launderer, BRUNO BIRMINGHAM, whose chauffeur, MAXWELL, is an undercover Justice Department agent out to nab his boss. The unexpected happens when Lulu has a cathartic sexual awakening with Bruno’s lesbian ex-wife, CAROLINA CHOW, who unleashes Lulu’s inhibitions, and unravels Maxwell’s carefully planned sting operation. Script handles the money laundering details with a plausible, intriguing computer scam involving a “Hiroshima” virus that will cover Bruno’s tracks. Behind the numbers game are deliciously drawn characters that resonate with their unique brand of intelligence, attitude, and risky business. Bruno Birmingham is charismatic and kinky, a brilliant money launderer who charges thirteen percent to wash dirty money. Lulu is enchanting and reckless, a dynamic female lead who undergoes a spirited sexual awakening. Justice Department agent Maxwell is tough, cocky, and potentially memorable. Dialogue is the muscle of the piece, chewy and explicit, with a wicked sense of humor. For those who like sex, money, and danger (in no particular order), script’s deeply drawn characters are the real stars of this sexy material.
Dollars: Was there a trigger that brought the financing? How did you work internally to package this material and ultimately get it made?
Mersault: The first thing Franklin Brauner asked me was, “Did I know the agent for Christopher Walken so he could play Bruno?” I said I would get Walken to read The Grey Area. I went to the agent’s office, threw my coverage on his desk, and declared this was “a great script” by Franklin Brauner and that he should send it to Christopher Walken. At first the agent only wanted to know if I’d ever been up to Franklin Brauner’s house in the Hollywood Hills. He seemed hesitant to send the script because Franklin Brauner was attached to direct but my passion for the material won the day. A few weeks later, Franklin Brauner called to say they were having drinks with Christopher Walken at the Chateau Marmont because the star was obsessed with the script, introducing himself as Bruno Birmingham on the phone with them. Their first meeting went well and Christopher Walken attached himself to the project. Franklin Brauner then asked me if I could get Joan Chen to play Bruno’s ex-wife. I said I would attach Joan Chen to the project. On the second floor of Omniscience, Franklin Brauner’s agent went to visit Joan Chen’s agent and asked if Joan would consider playing a lesbian in a Franklin Brauner movie and the agent said he just had lunch with Joan Chen and she told him to find her a movie where she could portray a lesbian. Next they wanted Steven Bauer from Scarface to play Maxwell the chauffeur and a few weeks after I gave their script to his agent they met with Steven Bauer and found their Maxwell. I had created my first Omniscience package with a cast that was totally committed to the script and supportive of their enigmatic director. Franklin Brauner’s agent found a financier to put up the money and a start date was announced at the Cannes Film Festival. Now, the only role in the script that remained open was the female lead, which Franklin Brauner and the producers fought over every day during preproduction. Anne Heche was cast as the bisexual banker and a year later at the Oscars she fell in love with Ellen DeGeneres and they became the most famous lesbians on the planet. I thought Heche was still in character from The Grey Area. I finally got invited to Franklin Brauner’s house in the Hollywood Hills at the very top of Sunset Plaza Drive and I realized why every agent would ask me about going up there: It was the most spectacular view of Los Angeles I’d ever seen.
Dollars: I watched The Grey Area. You’re pretty good in those scenes opposite Steven Bauer and Anne Heche. Tell us how you got cast and what happened with the finished film?
Mersault: Franklin wrote a small part for me to play as a thank you to the reader who put their movie together. I got along famously with Anne Heche when we practiced our lines together in the hair and makeup trailer before filming. I had this one scene with Steven Bauer where he went off script and started ad-libbing. I didn’t have that skill set so I would freeze up every time I tried to improvise something clever. I’m sure I was terrible in every one of my scenes, but after a screening at Omniscience this agent thought I was so brilliant she wanted to put me up for a part in Michael Mann’s Heat as o
ne of the guys in De Niro’s crew.
Dollars: Tell me you went to the audition at Warner Brothers.