by Zoey Dean
How right you are, Cammie thought. Publicists cared about how things looked, not how they were in reality.
Ben squeezed Cammie in close, leaning in to give her a delicate kiss on top of her mountain of strawberry-blond curls. "Perfect!" Sven cried.
But Ben and Cammie's happy, coupley photograph was starting to feel staged, and awfully convenient. Cammie couldn't help but wonder if, in real life, the same wasn't true of their relationship.
Pitch ThisWednesday morning, 10:07 a.m.
"Just have a seat, Sam. Marty will be with you in a moment.""Sure thing, Clarice."
"You look great. How's your father? How's the family? Is it true you're getting married?"
"Thank you, good, good, and yes," Sam replied. She'd worn a pair of DKNY black slacks and a black Chloé long-sleeved cotton blouse with puffy sleeves to this meeting, counting on the "wear black, it's slimming" effect.
"Congrats on that. I'll be sure to send something over. Now, there's coffee in the waiting area outside Marty's cubicle. Marty will be right with you."
"Thanks."
Sam drifted over to a somewhat improvised collection of gray fabric chairs, a single black couch, and a coffee table covered with back issues of the industry trades, plus Entertainment Weekly, Premiere, and Cahiers du Cinéma, the French movie magazine. She picked up Premiere and idly flipped through it as she waited for Marty to see her.
Marty Martinsen, the chief executive of mini major Transnational Pictures, had come to the faltering studio in the late 1980s and made it solvent via a string of shrewd acquisitions of horror and slasher films like The Nail Clipper (about a homicidal owner of a pedicure salon). He'd hit pay dirt in the early 1990s with a low-budget teen comedy called I Call Shotgun, about a not-too-good-looking guy and his drop-dead-gorgeous male best friend. The underdog wound up getting the hot girl, the hot car, and about a million dollars' worth of hot diamonds that landed in his lap after being tossed out of a helicopter during a chase sequence. The box office for I Call Shotgun set low-budget-feature records, as did its sequels and spin-off Xbox and PlayStation games, and the franchise had established Transnational as a Hollywood player for the next fifteen years.
Though studio execs were legendary in their battles for corner offices and imported furniture, Marty had held on to the very first gray-fabric cubicle he'd occupied, when he came to the company to work in the finance department. He had a regular, snazzy office, too, for when he had to impress an agent or the international press. But mostly, he liked to work in his cubicle. He said it kept him humble.
"How've you been, Sam?" Clarice sipped coffee from an oversize mug with the I Call Shotgun 3 logo on it. Marty supposedly paid Clarice--a no-nonsense woman in her fifties with a short graying pageboy bob and gleaming white teeth--a salary that was equal to that of his chief financial officer.
"I've been good," Sam replied. Because that's just what you did. When people asked how you were, they didn't really want to know. The truth was, she was freaking out. She was getting married in less than fifty hours. She still had not made a decision about going to film school or to Paris. Nor had she mentioned that indecision to her soon-to-be groom.
"I just wanted to say that it was fun, the way you had your wedding invitations delivered by messenger. We got ours just this morning." Clarice smiled like she herself had been invited, when actually the invite had gone to Marty and his wife.
That was fine, Sam thought. If Clarice wanted to bask in just being in the know about her wedding, more power to her. One of the great advantages of being married on a yacht far out to sea was that there was no risk of wedding crashers.
"Can I get you anything? Coffee? Pellegrino? Juice?"
"Nothing, I'm good."
Clarice glanced left and right, as if someone might overhear. "He's on with Cruise/Wagner Productions," she said confidentially. "This could take a while. You're here because ... ?"
"Script," Sam said laconically.
"Any good?"
"I wouldn't be here two days before my wedding if I didn't think so."
Sam looked down at the three-hole-punched script she'd brought with her, and which was currently residing in her too-large-by-her-own-measure lap--the script that Anna had sent over to her the night before with a self-deprecating message. Anna had titled it The Big Palm, which Sam figured was a play on words on New York City as the Big Apple and L.A.'s own horticultural mascot.
When Sam had finally stretched out last night after midnight to read it--she'd fortified herself with a small glass of Baileys--she'd been oh so skeptical. Mostly, she was tackling the script as a favor to her friend, as a way to boost her spirits with her dad in the hospital. She'd talked to Anna first thing that morning--her dad had regained consciousness but was still very woozy--and she wanted to do something to help. But it was hard to write a good movie. Everyone in town, plus their plumber, BMW mechanic, and astrologer had a spec script in their back pocket. But the truth was, 99 percent of them were senseless deaths of trees. That is, not even fit for toilet paper.
As Sam had opened Anna's script to read the first page, she had already been thinking of how to let Anna down nicely without being mean.
[FADE IN]
INT. FIRST-CLASS CABIN-JUMBO JET-DAY
A tall, blond girl whose mother probably trained her from birth to maintain the perfect posture she displays steps into the first-class cabin of the plane.She's dressed like the East Coast old-money girl she is, right down to her heirloom understated-but-worth-a-fortune diamond stud earrings.
First class is full, except for a single seat next to a middle-aged hipster who you just know is bald under his Dodgers baseball cap. And you also know he's hoping-praying!-that someone cute and young will slide in next to him.
Meet Emma, age 18. And Richie, 16 in the gonads and 48 on the calendar.
RICHIE
Yo! You looking for your seat?
EMMA
Four-E. That's me.
Richie caresses the empty seat next to him as he eyes Emma's ass. She looks for an escape route. Short of skydiving, it's unlikely. So she sits next to Richie.
RICHIE
Damn. This is gonna be an awesome freaking flight!
Emma keeps a smile on her face-she'd smile during her own beheading just to be polite-and closes her eyes. As she does, we flash back to ...
EXT. VEST POCKET PARK-MANHATTAN PRIVATE SCHOOL-DAY
... and see Emma during the previous autumn. Leaves falling, October ochre light slanting; you can almost taste the changing of the season. She's alone on a park bench reading Turgenev's Fathers and Sons. Every once in a while she glances up. Across the park is a cute guy writing on a laptop.
She knows this guy. She longs for him. But she's never talked to him. Never ever.
Emma screws up her courage and gives a shy wave. And ... he waves back. And smiles!
Should she walk over there? Every inch of her body longs to. She begins to rise ...
And then, an incredibly beautiful girl sneaks up on the guy from behind. Hands go over his eyes; lip-lockage ensues. Emma buries her head in her hands.
And we're out of flashback and back ...
INT. FIRST-CLASS CABIN-JUMBO JET-DAY
On the plane, now in flight. Richie pontificates unbidden.
RICHIE
I'm a hyphenate.
EMMA
Excuse me?
RICHIE
Producer-musician-writer-director-impresario. Do 'em all, do 'em all well.
Richie adores his own insinuation as he checks out her chest without shame.
RICHIE
I do lots of things well. You want a drink or three?
Emma keeps smiling. Checks her watch surreptitiously as Richie prattles on. She's the kind of girl who doesn't want to hurt the feelings of even a boor like him.
Only five hours and twenty-one minutes to Los Angeles. What fun.
Just when jumping begins to look like a good alternative, a guy a few seats away stands. He pulls his
Princeton sweatshirt over his head, revealing the kind of lean but muscled male perfection girls dream of.
Emma is enjoying the view when he turns and smiles at her.
This is Alex. And this is the start of Emma and Alex.
Sam stayed up past 2 a.m. reading. She was hooked. Oh, Anna's screenplay wasn't perfect. Some of it was over-written, and she could use a little work punching up her dialogue. And of course, it was shamelessly autobiographical.
But it was also funny. Touching. Parts of it made Sam cry. She didn't even mind that there was a Sam character in the script named Krystal, the daughter of America's most famous movie star, with fat ankles that no amount of plastic surgery could fix. This Krystal was thinner than the actual Sam, which was as good a sign as any that she and Anna would be friends for life.
After she'd reread the script a second time, she'd made a decision. She wasn't above using her family clout to get Anna's script read. The problem was, this kind of movie was mainstream. It was a summer teen-themed dramedy. It wasn't edgy enough, quirky enough, racy enough, or esoteric enough to be an indie. Which meant that her production options were limited. Columbia TriStar, Paramount, Universal, Fox, Warners, maybe New Line if they could keep it PG-13. Plus Transnational.
She decided to start with Marty, figuring he owed her dad one. Maybe this could be payback in a mutually beneficial way.
"Sam Sharpe! Come here!"
Marty's voice boomed out over the bullpen of cubicles. He was known in town for his aggressively casual style at the office--it took a lot for him to put on a jacket for a social function like a movie wrap party--and today was no exception: he sported two days' growth of beard in addition to his gray goatee, his bushy eyebrows were sorely in need of a trim, and he wore khaki pants and a vintage long-sleeved black Rolling Stones T-shirt with the red tongue on it.
He hugged her--hugs were standard-issue Hollywood, even among enemies. Then he asked quickly about her father and about her wedding plans. "Problem for me is, what do you get the girl who has everything? Are you registered at Fred Segal?" He raised his eyebrows to show that he was joking.
Actually, Sam and Eduardo had talked about wedding presents. They'd decided that they wanted their guests to make donations to Kidsave, a Los Angeles-based charity that brought adoptable older children from Russia, Kazakhstan, and Colombia to America for a summer experience that might well end in adoption. Her closest friends, she thought, would still bring presents. But really, she was a girl who had everything. Crystal bowls, tea sets, and Wedgwood dishes seemed superfluous for a couple that always ate out. What more could she want?
"It's all in the invite," she told him.
"The messenger delivered it. What brings you here? You want a job? You want a job, I got a job for you."
"No job. Pitch." She motioned with the script in her right hand.
Marty grinned. "Well, why didn't you say so? Let's go to the conference room. You'll have my undivided attention."
The Transnational executive conference room was on the same floor as Marty's cubicle, just a short walk past a small army of assistants, script readers, line producers, number crunchers, and all the other people who did the mundane business of a studio that turned out eight or ten movies a year.
As they walked, Sam noticed a harried-looking female intern wearing gray Armani slacks and a white-collared Stella McCartney shirt delivering coffee to a handsome development assistant with a buzz cut who was simultaneously answering e-mails and working his way through a monumental pile of scripts, all the while listening in on his boss's phone calls via headset. After she dropped off the coffee, the intern was promptly handed a messy stack of receipts, which she would presumably be labeling and organizing for some kind of expense report. Sam shuddered at the thought of spending her days individually taping receipts to sheets of paper and mentally thanked the gods of nepotism for making Jackson Sharpe her father.
The conference room was in the southwest corner of the building. There was a large picture window that looked out on the production lot. This morning, the studio was filming an eighteenth-century drama, judging from the costumed extras and horse-drawn carriages on a dirt-covered street. Sam hated costume dramas. They were so often vanity projects for the actors involved.
The other walls of the room featured posters of Transnational films past and present. I Call Shotgun and her father's upcoming Ben-Hur were both prominently placed. Sam had heard of studios that switched the movie posters depending on which big star was coming in, so the visiting star could labor under the misconception that his or her films were the most important pictures that the studio had ever made. Since she'd arrived at Transnational with only an hour's notice, she doubted that Marty had done the framed poster switcheroo.
That was a good sign. Her dad was this studio's main man.
"So, Sam." Marty settled back into a black leather chair and put his Converse-clad feet up on the blindingly white conference table. "Tell me your movie. Who's the writer? What's it about? Why should I care?"
"The writer? Just someone I know," Sam said carefully.
No sense prejudicing Marty out of the chute. No studio exec would care about a script by an unseasoned recent high school graduate. A wunderkind like Harmony Korine, who wrote the screenplay for Kids at age nineteen, didn't come along more than once a decade, and he barely had one good film in him. If you needed proof, try to watch Gummo.
"The story?" Marty uncrossed his feet.
"Coming-of-age, fish-out-of-water, about a rich girl from New York who moves to Beverly Hills for her senior year of high school. Think Mean Girls meets The Great Gatsby."
Marty was smiling. He wagged a finger at her. "You practiced that."
"Of course. I'm my father's daughter."
"Go on. What's the market?"
"This, film captures your entire teen demo. Plus women in their twenties and thirties will see it as a chick flick. But it's not some tossed-off gross-out comedy, and it's not some dark and moody indie thing, either. We've got some core adult characters, and there's plenty of romance and sex. The girl loses her virginity at the end of the first act. Repeatedly."
Marty laughed. "I like it. I'm seeing a good box shot. Let's hear the plot."
Sam grinned. The "box shot" to which Marty was referring was the inevitable picture of the scantily clad female lead that ended up on the DVD box. "You want the minute, five-minute, or full version?"
"Gimme the five-minute. I'm getting a little hungry."
This was a little disappointing, though Sam knew better than to let it show in her eyes. Any Hollywood producer worth his or her laser-printer cartridges knew to come to a pitch meeting with three different versions of their pitch. The one-minute pitch was the one to give if you were walking an exec to his or her BMW. The full version was the one that told the whole story, with any boring parts left out. That was what you wanted them to ask for. That was the best sell for your movie.
The five-minute pitch request was always ambiguous. It could mean that Marty didn't have interest and was just being polite. It could mean his stomach was honestly growling for a triple-decker pastrami sandwich from Canter's. There was no way to know. And for God's sake, you had to be a blooming idiot to ask.
She pitched. He looked appropriately interested, and even asked a couple of questions about opportunities for music and skin, in that order. As five minutes stretched to six, Sam hit the last beat of the story.
"So Emma, who met this guy Brogan on her trip to New York, comes back to L.A. for her last week of the summer. He follows her there and puts the question to her: Him or me? She chooses him. And they fly off into the sunset together. Literally. On a plane to the Far East. She says fuck you to Alex, fuck you to Yale, fuck you to what's expected of her, fuck you to everything except what her heart wants."
Marty nodded thoughtfully, then stood and stretched his arms as if doing a warm-up in aerobics class. "Got it. Thanks for coming in."
Sam stood. Damn, damn, damn. The "than
ks for coming in" kiss of death.
"Thanks for listening," Sam told him, as she edged around the conference table.
"Leave the script behind," he added.
That was the moral equivalent of putting her on life support, as opposed to just smothering her with a pillow. Or maybe he was just being nice, because she was, after all, Jackson Sharpe's daughter.
She hugged him, her heart deflating. She was glad she hadn't told Anna she was coming here. Anna was in a bad enough place right now. Imagine how she'd feel if she had to deal with Marty Martinsen rejecting her movie without even reading it.
"Thanks again, Marty. I can't wait to see you at the wedding."
Born to RunWednesday afternoon, 4:55 p.m.
It was mortifying, verging on humiliating. It was an outcome that Sam wouldn't have wished on Lindsay Lohan. But it was the truth, and she had to accept it.She'd be wearing a gown designed by that bitch Gisella to her own wedding.
There was a simple reason for it: Gisella's designs were incredible, and all the other wedding gowns she'd tried on blew chunks in comparison. Which was why she and Dee were standing on wooden blocks in Gisella's atelier in West Hollywood, with the Peruvian designer and her two male assistants bustling around them, draping exquisite fabric over their bodies and sticking pins into it at every conceivable angle.
The workshop, on the corner of Melrose and Robertson, was in a second-floor loft and looked like it could have been transported straight from SoHo. The enormous rectangular room had a two-story-high ceiling with exposed HVAC pipes that were painted all the shades of the rainbow. Racks of finished ensembles were scattered haphazardly around the room, while two or three dozen mannequins held the works in progress. The huge window that would ordinarily look out over Melrose was largely obscured by six-foot-tall sketches of designs that Gisella had drawn for her newest collection. The vibe was intense--assistants were scuttling about rolling fabric, boxing prototypes, and making notes on identical clipboards. Occasionally one would approach Gisella and whisper a question in her ear before returning to the task at hand.