“That’s one of the things we love about Gil Gladly,” Milt said. He kind-of meant it too. “‘Cause we’re all butt-asses too. He’s one of us!”
“We’re all butt-asses,” Frankly affirmed, reaching up for a mug.
CHAPTER 12
As more of Gabe’s friends piled into the scenester dive bar in Silver Lake that evening, the verdict became unanimous. The new Blade Runner movie boasted incredible cinematography and art direction, everyone really dug the music, but the script and storyline left far too much to be desired.
The Blade Runner sequel, they all agreed, was never going to hold a candle to the original.
“Well, sure,” Gabe’s scruffy, gray-bearded pal in a worn-out trucker’s hat that had a faded map of Tennessee on it for no good reason, black thick-rimmed glasses, and a striped vintage store track suit jacket with a 49ers logo on it agreed. “But it could have been way better. I was expecting a lot more, especially from the guy who did Arrival.”
“Now that was a fantastic flick,” said another one of Gabe’s buddies, who looked younger than the first, but not by much, and who Milt was pretty sure had at one time been on a series of commercials in the early 2000s that he couldn’t quite put his finger on.
Everyone could agree with that too, including the bartender, Meg, who was once probably very beautiful and still had a certain Hollywood (Blvd) mien to her. What with her long, silken onyx hair, slight Sunset (Blvd) goth-lite makeup, and a ratty Mötley Crüe shirt holding tight to her forty-plus years of zaftig pudge.
“I fucking loved Arrival,” Meg crowed, as she brought another pitcher of frothy amber ale to the boys’ side of the rather small, crowded bar blaring with some early Rolling Stones song Milt only partially remembered. There was an unhealthy number of TVs with three different basketball games on, surrounding the bar from every angle.
“What did you think about Arrival, Milt?” Gabe laughed, doing his best to draw everyone’s attention to his friend sitting on the stool next to him and drifting off into space.
“Uh, yeah,” Milt muttered. “Laney and I saw it before I came out here. We were pretty surprised by how good it was.”
“This dude fucking hates every movie that comes out!” Gabe gleefully barked even louder than before, and now it was extremely obvious that everyone was looking at Milt, who would have blushed if he were a cartoon.
“I don’t hate every movie. I just can’t stand most of the crap that comes out these days. What can I say? I also don’t like McDonald’s, comic book movies, and current television. I’m like Brian Wilson,” Milt smirked, being knowingly snide. “I just wasn’t made for these times!”
They all had a chuckle at that, two of the guys around the bar meaning it. Gabe’s friend in the trucker hat poured a beer for Milt, though he declined.
“What, you don’t drink beer?” the generous soul asked.
“I haven’t had beer in a few years,” Milt said. “I’m a whiskey man these days, and besides, I’m trying to lose some weight. Carbs, dude.”
“You’re always trying to lose some weight,” Frankly said to his right.
“We’re all trying to lose some weight now that we’re old and disgusting!” Gabe said, grabbing the beer that was originally being handed over to Milt.
“No chicken wings either?” Meg asked on her way back over to the boys, two platters of large, fat, succulent, miniature drumsticks in her mannishly large mitts.
“Paleo, baby!” Milt said, helpfully taking one of the large platters of steaming meat from Meg’s right hand and placing it before Gabe, Frankly, and himself. Gabe’s pal in the trucker hat took the other platter and placed it in front of himself and his own trio down the bar apiece.
“You know, I have to tell you something,” Meg said. “As soon as you came in here and Gabe introduced you, I could’ve sworn you were—”
“Don’t say it!” Gabe cracked, busting up completely. Frankly looked down at the bar in front of him, shaking his head and giggling impishly.
“I need a break from the Rogen sightings,” Milt said, chomping down on a wing. “Man, this is the best chicken wing I’ve ever had! I spent almost a year a while back producing short foodie videos for Vanity Fair online where all we did was try to find the best chicken wings in the country.”
“You worked for Vanity Fair?” one of Gabe’s friends noshing on his own chicken wing asked.
“Well, online,” Milt said. “It’s not like it paid much, but traveling around meeting buffalo wing aficionados was pretty cool. Of course, I’m married now, so one of these days I’ll have to figure out how to make real money with this shit. But who knows?”
“Ain’t easy,” Gabe’s friend who may have been from those commercials said in earnest solidarity.
“Milt’s here promoting a movie he made,” Gabe chimed in, devouring a chicken wing.
“What movie?”
“Did you ever watch KidTalk on Balloon?” Gabe asked.
“I didn’t have cable growing up,” the friend who might’ve been in those aforementioned commercials said, taking a shot that Meg had dropped down in front of him before she fled away to the patrons at the other end in her frantic back and forth game of Pickle.
“It was this show that was on all the time on that channel,” one of the other patrons overhearing said, leaning over to join the conversation. “I watched it a little in between KidDerp and that other show…”
“KidLab,” Milt said.
“Yeah! Yeah, KidLab! I fucking loved those shows! KidLab and KidDerp were my jams back then, man! I’d watch KidTalk in between them. I fucking loved Balloon as a kid.”
“Didn’t you say a while back that someone was making a documentary entirely about Balloon?” Frankly asked.
“Yeah, but there’s always a few people trying to do that,” Milt said, not really wanting to discuss it and ordering a double Wild Turkey on the rocks from Meg when she made her way back to his side of the bar.
“There’s that new one they’re almost done with and they were going to interview you for it, right?” Frankly asked.
“Yeah,” Milt sniffed. “I was going to be their Balloon expert, but I never heard from the dude again. Another rich kid who lives with his parents, travels all over the country on their dime shooting stuff for his doc. Blah, blah, blah. Must be nice.”
Meg dropped off Milt’s Turkey doubler and he went right at it, swigging as to the manner born.
“Fucker has one of the creators of NiñoPrograma onboard as EP, helping him get access to everyone else he’s trying to interview,” Milt said, finishing off the last drops of his bourbon. “Apparently his dad went to NYU with him.”
“Which show?”
“NiñoPrograma,” Milt said.
“It was this Balloon show back in the early eighties—”
The possible commercial actor took it from there. “—And they had these puppets who were supposed to be these Mexican guys, and the whole point was supposed to be that, like, they were trying to be all educational about other cultures—”
“—but when you look back on it now,” Eavesdropper kept the ball in play, “it was soooo fuckin’ racist!”
“Mmm.” Milt was holding his glass of ice and looking into it like he was trying to will whiskey back into the thing. “Yeah, it got called out pretty hard about two years ago by Jezebel and a few other sites in the blogosphere.”
“Wait,” said Trucker Hat, “so this rich kid asshole you’re talking about brought on the creator of this Mexi-hating kids show to EP his doc on Balloon?”
Milt shrugged. “First off, the show wasn’t Mexican-hating and in fact they were trying to be promoting of the culture, but…ugh, never mind. Fuck it. Not my problem who he wants to work with on his doc.” Milt tore into another chicken wing. “And hey, you gotta have some kind of celebrity EP or whatever onboard these days. Either you got the money or you need the celebrity, even if it’s someone who’s kind of a nobody but has access. And knows enough people who can g
et you your Kickstarter link or articles on AV Club and shit like that. It’s all a game. Money, publishity, chelebrity….”
Milt was beginning to slur.
“Didn’t Tony Rigatoni pop onto their film after you guys bounced him from yours?” Frankly asked, clearly already knowing the answer but wanting to be part of the discussion.
“Yeah,” Milt said, finishing his wing and wiping his hands with a napkin. “Gil found out about it when they brought him in for an interview…courtesy of Tony hooking them up after he’d gotten to know Gil from our film. Nice, huh? Right before we kicked him to the curb, Tony bragged about how he just jumps from pop culture doc to pop culture doc, watching whatever seems to be doing well on Kickstarter and Indiegogo, then shoves his way in and basically takes over. He told us about it like this was a good thing. We didn’t let him do that to us, so I guess he found another team who would. Congrats.”
“They interviewed Gil?”
“Yeah, duder. You would have to interview Gil Gladly if you’re doing a doc about Balloon,” Gabe said.
“We talked about it when Gil got the invite to be interviewed,” Milt continued, “and Gil even asked if he wanted me to have him send them a cease and desist order for potentially competing with our project. But I said he shouldn’t do that. He should just wait and see what comes of the production before doing the interview.” Milt drank the ice water that was left in his glass. “And then, you know, next thing we see on Gil’s Twitter page is a pic from his interview with the Balloon doc folks. So, whatever. Gil does what Gil does. Force of nature. Can’t stop him. Trust me.”
“Man, I never would’ve thought that someone like Gil Gladly would be all like that,” the interloper a few seats down injected. “He sounds like a real ballbuster with the whole cease and desist letter thing. I always thought he was like a Mr. Rogers type or something.”
“Aw, c’mon, man,” Gabe said, leaning over the bar with a clownish stretch. “Just because he was on a kids show doesn’t mean he’s not gonna act exactly the fuck the same as everyone else in the entertainment industry. You know?”
“I guess that makes sense,” Interloper said, leaning over to Gabe to shake hands. “My name’s Trevyn, by the way. You guys want some shots? Jameson? On me?”
The boys did want. Trevyn the interloper called for the shots from Meg, who went off to go retrieve them on yet another platter.
“Gil’s got a lot riding on this thing,” Milt said. “He paid for most of the budget himself. Then there’s all this shit going on in his life right now. Plus, he’s got all these insecurity issues in general and—”
“Insecurities?”
“Fuck yeah, insecurities,” Frankly said. “Kids channel or not, Gil was a talk show host, man. You ever watch The Larry Sanders Show with Garry Shandling? All that stuff is real.”
“Hell yeah,” Trevyn said, nodding. “Fucking loved that show. Nah, I get it. And Shandling was all fucked-up in real life too, wasn’t he?”
“He was,” Milt said. “Who wouldn’t be? Gil will tell me about how depressed he is and how he doesn’t think anyone cares about him anymore or would even give a shit about a doc about him or whatever…then like five minutes later, he’ll text me right back and tell me a whole bunch of kids saw him coming out of a restaurant in SoHo or wherever and totally swarmed him, then he’s all good again. Dude’s all over the place. You’d be too.”
“Didn’t you say before you had to basically force him to do the documentary in the first place?”
“Oh, I always gotta force everyone to do everything,” Milt laughed. “You know me. I’m an asshole.”
“This is true.”
“Yeah, I don’t know,” Milt considered. “It’s like…sometimes I wonder if these people really want to do any of these kinds of things. You have all these people doing documentaries about themselves and reality shows about themselves and, yeah, books about themselves. It must be really great in a lot of ways, but then really weird and even a bit embarrassing too. It’s their name.”
“Like The Crucible!”
Milt smiled. “Well, no, not like The Crucible.”
“It’s my naaaaaammmme!“ Gabe, Frankly, and Trucker Hat shouted.
“Oh, man.” Frankly laughed. “Did you see that awful movie they made of The Crucible with Demi Moore?”
“That movie did suck donkey balls, but Gary Oldman was badass in it,” Gabe said.
“I just hope all this shit worksh out,” Milt said, downing his complimentary shot and speaking with a more punctuated slur. “Becaushe I don’t want Gil to have done all of thish for nothing. Or me or any of the guys like lil’ Frankly over here, who worked on thish goddamn thing for sho long. I jush…want thish shit…to work out. For everyone.”
The other guys applauded sarcastically, including Trevyn the interloper.
“Fuhhhhhhck you all,” Milt said, holding in his laughter.
Frankly gave Milt a much-deserved but playful smack to the face. Milt whipped his pen out of his pocket, wielding it like a knife. The laughter now spread throughout the whole section of the bar.
“Is that supposed to scare me?” Frankly chortled.
Milt clicked the back of the pen, engaging the pointy tip. Everyone lost their mind and would’ve fallen over off their stools if they had been cartoon characters too.
Before they could continue the bibulous charade, Milt’s phone began vibrating in his pocket, and he hopped off his stool to make his way through the crowd of standing customers drinking and watching the multiple basketball games bombarding them from every possible angle.
Out the door, there was a small group of people smoking cigarettes and laughing at whatever story the principle lady talking had just told.
One of them pointed at Milt and called out that he “looks like that guy from that movie where the guy gets the girl pregnant,” and Milt kept walking, already in conversation with Louis Bradley.
“Hey, Milt, wussup?” Louis asked on the other end of the phone.
“In LA with a couple of my old friends out here and some of their buddies in Silver Lake,” Milt said. “We’re getting ready for the premiere tomorrow. Should be good. What’s going on in Portland?”
“Ummmm” Louis said. “So, I just got a call from Gil.”
“Uh huh.…” Uh oh.
“And, like, he’s all freaking out about the numbers of tickets sold for the McMenamins show.”
“Okay….” Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.…
“I just wanted to make sure I was handling it correctly.”
“Right,” Milt said, taking a breath and looking out to the constipated early evening traffic before him on the street beyond the cracked sidewalk upon which he was pacing back and forth. Each car was nearly stock-still, illuminated by red brake lights of the car in front of it and white lights of the car in back of it as though they were all in some kind of nightmarish electric parade. “So, what did you say?”
“I told him the truth,” Louis said.
“Awww, man, seriously?”
“Yeah, but I mean…I inflated the numbers a little bit of course.”
“Oh, thank god,” Milt said with a heavy exhale of relief. He suddenly had a serious hankering for a cigarette and turned around, striding back to the group of smokers outside the bar, wondering if it would be worth asking them for one. They were getting more raucous and he just didn’t feel like dealing with that crap.
“Yeah, I mean I get it,” Louis said. “There’s no way we could possibly know how many people will actually be coming out anyway, right? I’m sure there will be plenty of walk-ins, especially with all the radio and press stuff you guys are doing out here. It’s all good. I have to go through this kind of thing with Vinnie sometimes too. I’m wellllllllll aware of the game, man.”
“Yeah, no, you did the right thing,” Milt said, shuffling back toward the bar and steadying himself to ask for a cigarette to soothe himself.
Milt knew Louis understood the drill. They’d met six
or seven years earlier while both working some horror movie festival in Baltimore. Louis was a few years older than Milt and had already begun making his own documentary about his pop culture “mentor” of a sort, schlockmeister extraordinaire Vincent Van Groan.
Vincent Van Groan had made a name for himself pioneering the next wave of campy, goofy, over-the-top, culty movies in the vein of Russ Meyer and Roger Corman. In the eighties, he’d had a string of minor underground hits, particularly with his one truly commercially successful franchise about a woman with demon tits. They’d made seven of the goddamn things over the years, and there was now a Broadway musical in the works based on the first one.
Milt had known and worked a little with Vincent Van Groan himself and really admired the guy’s passion for filmmaking, but he also knew that, yeah, Van Groan could be somewhat curmudgeonly and difficult at times. Heck, Van Groan had to be—what?—in his early eighties? Amazing he was still working, sort of, but Milt could only imagine some of the challenges Louis had to face on his doc and other work with Van Groan.
“Gil kept hitting me up about the numbers for the different venues,” Milt went on, “and I had to explain to him that we don’t know yet, we don’t want to know yet, and he should be cool about it and not worry. Part of it is because of how fucked the CineRanchero event keeps getting—”
“Oh, yeah? What’s up with CineRanchero?”
“The chick they gave us to ‘produce’ the thing is just a total fuck-up and doesn’t seem to give a shit about anything we’re trying to do here.”
“Typical.”
“You know how this shit happens. Did you see the CineRanchero website for our event? They couldn’t even spell the goddamn name of the movie right. From what Gil and I could see, they’re not doing any promotion at all. Everything is just word of mouth now, and if they had bothered to tell us that months ago, we could have gotten shit going on our own like we’re doing at every other fucking place, but too late now!”
“That fucking sucks, man,” Louis said. “Sorry to hear it.”
“I don’t understand how people like this Sally broad can end up in charge of these things. I’ve been running around in this game for, like, half my life, and it still baffles me every time how these people make it through that we gotta deal with. It’s like kids who never learn to read but still get passed along to graduate high school.”
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