by Jayne Denker
What the hell indeed—did he really think I was slumming, hanging out in a scriptwriting class at a community college in Moreno Valley, just for giggles? Sometimes Alex was more than a little thick. I tried to stay patient. “What else would I be here for, Alex?”
He paused, looked down at his feet. After a moment he muttered, “I don’t know. Something else.”
When he didn’t say anything more after that brilliantly vague statement, I jumped in with, “So let’s talk. What do you think? Get David and Sabrina together again? Everybody’d love to have you back, you know that.”
Alex stared at me, shook his head. “You don’t get it, do you, Faith?”
“Get? What’s to get?” I hated the fake enthusiasm I was spouting, but it had to be done. I punched his arm softly. “Come on, it’ll be like coming home. Modern Women was your life for nearly two years—don’t you miss it?”
“Faith . . .”
“I mean, sure, things weren’t exactly . . . pleasant there at the end,” I rambled, feeling my footing slipping. He didn’t look as excited about the proposition as I’d expected. But sales pitches were part of my job. I could do this. “But hey, we’re grown-ups. Lot of water under the bridge. We’re beyond all that now, aren’t we? Still friends?”
“But . . . I’m in school.”
“Well, yeah, but . . . so you walk. No big deal. I don’t see shackles and chains.”
“I want to be here.”
He couldn’t be serious. Could he?
“I like it. Being in school, learning stuff . . . learning how to act . . .”
“Alex, please, stop with the low-rent James Franco thing. You’re better than everyone else here already—you know that!” Of course, that got me a ton of nasty glares from the other students in the class, who had all been listening but pretending not to. “Well, it’s true!” I snapped at them. They turned away from me in disgust, leaving just Mason, who was close at hand on my left. Again.
“Ms. Sinclair, I need to start class now—”
“I’m not stopping you.”
“That means Alex too.”
Bristling, I turned on him. “Alex and I are still talking.”
“But class—”
“Go and start class, Mr. Schue. We’re not done here.”
Mason’s jaw was working hard. “Then take it outside. You’re wasting my time.”
I took a breath and readjusted my bag on my shoulder. “Fine. Alex, let’s continue this in the foyer.”
He hesitated. “No . . .”
I turned to go, but that brought me up short. “Excuse me?”
“I’m staying here. I don’t want to be back on the show. It started out awesome, but then it got . . . not awesome.”
Ah, there was that erudition I was always so fond of.
“But . . .” Suddenly the small of my back was slick with flop sweat. Alex couldn’t turn me down—he just couldn’t! The plan was to get him back on the show and get myself back as exec producer. That was the plan. There was no other plan!
“I’m staying here because this is real, Faith. Really real.”
In spite of my promise to remain upbeat at all costs, I winced. Oh God, not the “this is real” stuff. I thought he was over that.
“Modern Women is real, Alex.”
“No, it’s not. Not like this. I’m sorry, Faith. I’ll see you around, okay?”
And he leaped back up onto the stage, all hard muscles and grace, leaving me alone on the floor. The students turned to Mason, who was now on the stage as well. Without another look at me, he clapped his hands as usual and said, “Okay. Let’s get started . . .”
* * *
Alex had floored me, laying down the gauntlet like that. “This is real” . . . damn, I hated that flat statement more than anything else he ever uttered. He’d talked about the “real” stuff often, when it came to his “integrity” about his acting, but casual, off the cuff, to start. Sometimes he even used it as a compliment, back when we were getting along: “Wow, Faith, this dialogue is so real” or the like. After that night at his apartment, though, he started using those words as a weapon. He started giving me a hard time, challenging my scripts, story lines, dialogue, direction . . . everything. He started out subtly, asking questions here and there: “Would David really do that?” or “Would he really say it that way?” And, ultimately, the dreaded “Faith, that doesn’t feel very real to me.”
At first, nobody else noticed his change in behavior, except Jaya. She threw me a “WTF?” look pretty often. I always blew her off, which made me feel bad—after all, she was my best friend, and I wanted to tell her everything, but I couldn’t. Maybe it was my pride, or maybe the whole thing made me feel like a tweener trying to figure out boys (and succeeding about as much as a tweener would, which was not at all), but I just couldn’t open up to her. Of course, that left me trapped in my own head and supremely confused.
Sometimes I even wondered if maybe Alex was right. What if my stuff was phony? What if I really wasn’tany good? Should I make it more “real,” whatever that would mean in terms of a TV dramedy? After all, I already did my best to keep Modern Women several levels above the sniffy classification “nighttime soap.”
Then Alex took it too far. He started talking about how much he adored the gritty Realism movement of the 1970s—something he’d just discovered and explained to everyone who would listen, as though nobody else had heard of it. I never bothered to tell him that my own mother was a key player in that movement. He wouldn’t have listened anyway.
“That was real,” he’d always say as he waxed rhapsodic about Chinatown orTaxi Driver. “Nicholson was real. De Niro was real. I want to make this real too.” As if I’d be able to wedge grit, guns, drugs, and blood spatters into the world I’d built around, well, modern women, as the title said. That’d work. Right.
Then one day he brought his own brand of “realism” to the show. We were shooting what was supposed to be a romantic moment between him and Sabrina: Italian restaurant, soft candlelight, beautiful clothes for him and Kimmie, sweet words. The kind of scene that made my viewers swoon and motivated their significant others to get their heads out of the Doritos feedbag and take them out on a date. Hey, I tried to provide a public service whenever I could.
Anyway, the scene was lit perfectly, I was happy with the script, the set looked great, everybody was ready to go. We started shooting, Kimmie and Alex were doing fine, and then . . . Alex started eating the food. As he talked.
I couldn’t even make out what he was saying. And even if I could, I’d have been distracted by the sauce and bits of bread spewing all over. There was David—sexy, perfect, ideal David, as embodied by sexy, er, allegedly perfect, ideal Alex (at least before this moment)—slurping his pasta, talking around huge mouthfuls of food, sauce flying everywhere. Never mind that the pasta was stone cold, the sauce congealed, and the bread stale and rubbery. He went at it like he’d been starved for weeks.
Wes, the sound guy, gave me a horrified look. I cut the scene. “Alex. What are you doing?”
He swallowed with difficulty. It was a mouthful that would choke a walrus, after all. “The scene.”
“Are you trying to make Wes over here vomit? Are you trying to splatter Kimmie with marinara buckshot? What’s with the eating?”
Alex looked at me like I was an idiot. “This is a restaurant, Faith. David and Sabrina should be eating, not pushing food around their plates. Eating is real.”
Oh Christ, the “real” thing again.
Kimmie gave me a stricken look. “Eating? Who said anything about eating? I can’t eat carbs!”
I suggested we all take five. Kimmie took off immediately, probably to weigh herself to see if she had accidentally inhaled some airborne calories. Alex also disappeared, but he came back a minute later and shoved his tablet under my nose.
He hit “play” and a scene from Heartburnstarted up. “There.” Nicholson and Streep were eating pizza while talking. “See? That’s re
al.”
All the chomping and slurping—I could see where Alex picked it up. On the one hand, I was impressed that he knew of the Nora Ephron-penned movie. On the other . . . well, I was just annoyed. “Oh yeah, that’s ‘real.’ So real that now the world knows Nicholson has no table manners.”
I swear Alex practically stamped his foot in frustration. “Don’t you get it? Movies, TV, they can be so fake, so plastic. But it didn’t used to be like that. Back then, entertainment had depth. I keep saying we should get some of that into the show, but you won’t listen.”
“So you’ve been doing research into your ‘craft,’” I said, with more than a little sarcasm, as I gestured at the tablet, where the movie was still playing out.
“I’ve seen all the old-time movies, Faith.”
And the ’70s was “old time” since when? God, he was pissing me off. My sarcasm meter stayed in the red zone. “Got a Louise Brooks box set, have you?”
Alex looked at me, puzzled, for a second. Then, in a condescending tone, he said, “That was Louise Fletcher in Cuckoo’s Nest.”
Things between us bottomed out real fast after that.
* * *
I should have known something was up when the classroom was filled with pings, bings, chimes, and bips from everyone’s phones at the same time. Proud that I had gotten to class early for the second time in a row (not that Mason was there to acknowledge it), I took a last sip of coffee and glanced at my phone, which hummed quietly as it vibrated on the desk. (I had learned my lesson about the ringer after the time Jaya had called in the middle of class.) It was a text from Mason.
“Have to cancel class. Apologies. Please complete work listed in syllabus. See you Friday.”
Seconds later, after all the students read the same text, they gathered their things and, chatting, headed for the door, happy for the unexpected free time.
Before I knew what I was doing, I heard myself say, “Hang on!”
They all turned to look at me.
“Um, okay, so Mas—Professor Mitchell can’t make it, but I’m still here. And I’m, you know, an instructor for this class. So . . . let’s have class.”
The students stayed where they were, looking at me like I’d just sprouted two extra heads.
“Sit down,” I said, pulling myself out of the student desk and taking my place at the front of the room—Mason’s usual domain. Still giving me skeptical looks, they inched back toward their seats. Once they were settled again, I rubbed my hands together and glanced around. “Okay, let’s do this thing. Let’s talk about scriptwriting.”
“You mean, go on from where Professor Mitchell left off last time?” Brandon asked.
I had no idea where Mason had left off last time; I’d nearly fallen asleep and toppled out of my chair, I’d been so bored. So Iwouldn’t be boring.
“No, let’s talk about what I know best: show business. Real show business.”
I was pleased to notice that they actually perked up. Until . . .
“So, like, is Britney Spears, like, on tranquilizers to keep her from flipping out all the time?” Taylor asked eagerly.
“What? No, that’s not what I meant. I don’t even know Britney Spears.”
Again, just as Alice had done in the first class when I denied a torrid affair with Johnny Depp, all the students slouched back in their seats, immediately uninterested.
“I’m talking about the business, not the celebrities.”
“But you know celebrities,” Taylor persisted.
“Sure I know celebrities. Big deal. They’re just people. Some are pleasant and some aren’t. Some are angry, or needy, or slutty, or neurotic, or spacey, or, yes, medicated. Some are smart and some are dumb as a bag of hammers. And no, I’m not telling you which ones are the stupid ones,” I added, seeing a couple of them start to speak. “It’s not my job, or my place, to give you the dirty details about famous people. I’m here to talk about writing for the entertainment industry, so let’s talk about it.”
My sharp tone brought them up short; those who were slouching sat up a little straighter, and they all focused on me. That was better.
“If you’re in this class, you probably have ideas for stories kicking around in your head, right? Or maybe you’ve even written some scripts already?” Nods. “Okay, then, we’re going to have a pitch session. You tell me your best idea, the best way you can, and I’ll tell you what sort of response you’d get if you tried to sell it to the suits. How does that sound?”
Now I really had their attention. Their nods were more vigorous, and they looked at one another excitedly. Hell, I could do this. This was easy.
“All right then, who’s first?”
More exchanged glances, then Alice said, “Um, some of our ideas are for plays, Ms. Sinclair.”
“That’s okay. A story’s a story. Now remember, I’m going to be completely honest, so no getting offended. I’m going to act just like the money men you’d be facing, no matter what your medium. And don’t forget, you’ve gotta be quick—no blathering, no umm-ing—and you have to make your idea sound strong. Got it? Go!”
They hesitated some more, but finally headstrong Trina spoke up, bless her.
“Okay, I’ve got one. It’s—hey, you’re not going to steal any of these, are you?” she asked suspiciously.
“No,” I said, fighting the urge to laugh. “No, I am not personally interested in your script ideas, I swear.” God, that was the last thing I needed. “You have total confidentiality as of right now. And if you ever see any idea that you mention here in one of my shows, you’re free to sue me.”
That got some smiles out of them, thank goodness.
Trina continued, “So okay. Like Alice said, my idea is for a play. It’s about this dysfunctional family who are all brought together for a long weekend at their summer house. And during the play all the stuff in their pasts comes out, and they fight a lot, and eventually they all make peace.”
Ah, dysfunctional people arguing for two and a half hours. Hello, Mr. Albee. I hated to tell these kids that the same drama had been written and rewritten a hundred times, but I had promised them the truth. So I gave it.
“Derivative. Next.”
“But—”
“Been done. Needs more originality. Next!”
Trina gave me a shocked look as Alice jumped in. “Okay, there’s this teenage girl, right? And she’s got two guys fighting over her—”
“Everybody look up the term ‘derivative.’ And Alice, if the next word out of your mouth is going to be ‘vampire,’ ‘werewolf,’ or ‘shapeshifter,’ you can quit right now.”
“That’s not fair.”
“That’s life in the trenches. Next!”
“Okay, there’s this serial killer—” Brandon started, then paused.
“I’m listening.”
“I was waiting for you to call it derivative.”
“I might. Go on for now.”
“And the tone is really gritty, really dark. And these two people, who were abused when they were younger, go after him—”
I made a buzzer noise. “Too bad, Brandon, you almost had me. Next!”
To my surprise, Michael spoke up. I’d always gotten the impression that he wasn’t sure why he was in the class, or even why he was a theater major. But he said, “Um, okay, this is for a movie?” I nodded. “There’s this comic book that hardly anybody reads, with this cool superhero—”
“DC or Marvel?”
“Marvel, I think?”
“Sold!”
Michael was elated, but Brandon looked mutinous. “Hey, that’s not fair! How come his idea sold so fast?”
“Superheroes. Studios always buy ideas for superhero mega-blockbusters. But the suits don’t read all the obscure comics themselves, so they wait for nerds to bring them the ideas that haven’t been used yet. Simple as that.”
“But it’s a stupid idea!”
“I agree.”
Michael suddenly looked affronted that I’d ca
lled him a nerd and his idea stupid.
Brandon persisted, “But—”
“But,” I interrupted him, “this stupid idea makes good box office here and, more important, internationally. Which makes the studio stupid amounts of money. So Michael will become stupid successful.” He grinned, pleased at that. I think he forgave me for the previous insults. “That, in a nutshell, is the business. Anyone else?”
Elias and Taylor, the only two left, clammed up, probably thinking fast about how they could add superheroes to their earnest or clichéd story ideas.
“Look,” I said, in a softer tone. “I know it sucks. But you can’t give up. You have to come up with a unique idea, and believe in it enough to convince the suits that it’s worth greenlighting. That’s what I did with my show, and that’s what you can do with your idea for a play, or a movie, or even a TV show. Just have the passion, okay? And the conviction. Oh, one more thing,” I added. “If you’re ever in doubt, just tell them your story is about redemption. They never say no if they can latch onto the word ‘redemption.’ Okay, moving on . . .”
* * *
Wow, was I proud of myself. I’d taught a whole class and lived to tell the tale. I had imparted my knowledge, shared my wisdom. What a rush.
I was still on my I’m-changing-lives teacher high when I strolled into the theater building to visit Alex’s acting class. The good mood I was in was even extending to him, and I was willing to give him another chance to change his mind. “This is real”—pfft. Wants to be a student and learn stuff—double pfft. I knew what he liked: money, fame, his gorgeous mug seen by millions in high def every Wednesday night at nine o’clock.
Whatever delusion Alex was clinging to these days was an obstacle I, Faith Freakin’ Sinclair, could easily overcome. The dude in the tweed jacket, physically blocking the entrance to the auditorium, looked like more of a challenge, however.
“Hey, Mr. Professor Mason Mitchell. We missed you in class this morning.” His dark look was seriously compromising my good mood. “Something wrong?”
He crossed his arms. “Mind telling me what all that was about, Ms. Sinclair? The fact that you decided to ‘teach’ today?”