I explain all this. Dagmar knits her dark brows. “And they made only the one film?”
“The Russians invaded, or something. The technology got suppressed. I think the idea was that people weren’t supposed to vote any more, they were just supposed to take their cinema the way the authorities wanted them to.”
Dagmar gets out her handheld, calls up an application, and begins scribing letters in the air. Motion sensors in the handheld copy the notes into digital memory.
“There must have been multiple plotlines,” she says. “Do you know how they handled that?”
“The last scene was presented first,” I say. “The rest of it was flashback. So whatever twists the plot took, they all ended in the same place.”
“Interesting…” Her voice becomes a murmur, the words addressed more to herself than to the rest of us. “I wonder if we can do that, start with the end.” She’s frowning at the screen on her handheld, obviously lost in some kind of internal, writerly calculation.
“So this movie is going to be like that?” I ask. “The audience is going to vote?”
She continues to stare at the screen, and her words come slowly, distractedly.
“Not the audience. The viewer. Each viewer.”
“How can that work?” I ask. “There’s only one screen in the theater, right? You can’t show a separate movie for every customer.”
Dagmar holds up a hand. “Just a moment.” She scribes another note to herself, then turns to me.
“The picture isn’t going to be in theaters,” she says. “It’s going to be seen through augmented reality.”
I feel a wave of disappointment. There have been films presented in AR before, mostly shorts, mostly bad but some all right. But it’s still a gimmick.
It’s not the real pictures. It’s not a group of strangers in a large dark room that smells of popcorn, mesmerized by the shimmering images projected on a screen, so caught up in the action that they breathe in unison. AR isn’t the cinema. Instead it’s something smaller, lesser.
I picture the movie outside on Rodeo Drive, an image of me trying with all the skill I possess to out-dazzle the sex workers, the hucksters, the political slogans, the clumps of tourists.
Ismet speaks for the first time. “I don’t think you quite understand,” he says. “This is a major picture. It’s not an experiment, we really know what we’re doing.”
Cleve clears his throat. “I don’t see the revenue stream here,” he says. “If you’re not in theaters, you don’t have a mechanism for selling tickets.”
“The viewers go online and get an account,” Ismet says. “The money comes straight to us. It doesn’t go through theaters or distributors, so we get a hundred percent.”
Cleve seems intrigued by the potential for profit, but he’s still skeptical.
“You’re going to piss off a lot of important people.”
“If we get the viewers,” Dagmar says, “that won’t matter.” She shrugs. “And there probably will be a theatrical release, sooner or later.”
“So people are just going to watch this movie in their homes?” Cleve asks.
“No.” Dagmar is adamant. “The experience of cinema is special. Movies are something you have to go somewhere to watch. You go to a dedicated place, with friends and loved ones. You don’t get that experience with TV or on your computer, and we want to build a community around this experience—so people will have to go to certain places to view it.”
“Without theaters,” Cleve says, “where will they go?”
“Public places,” Dagmar says. “Parks, plazas, community centers. Maybe restaurants or bars, if we can convince the venue they’ll make a profit selling food or drink.”
I’m maybe a little mollified. Dagmar understands the specialness of cinema, and that wins my sympathy. But that doesn’t mean that I think she can re-create the experience in some bar, or in a public square.
I decide not to worry about any of that. I’m the talent. I don’t get to pick where the movie is shown.
“I’m still interested in the interactive thing,” I say. “How’s this going to work?”
“It means,” Dagmar says, “more work for you. Because you’re going to have to film all the various alternate plotlines.”
I think about this. “How many alts?” I ask.
“The script isn’t final yet—but we think maybe twelve or fifteen actual alternate scenes, all of them fairly short. Each episode will need to have all its big finales in the same place whatever happens, so…”
“Episodes?” says Cleve. “So this is some kind of TV series?”
“No,” Dagmar says. “It’s a feature. But we’re going to split it into pieces and release it over the course of several weeks.”
Cleve just stares at her. “It’s a serial?”
I sense that he’s trying Dagmar’s patience.
“We do this all the time,” she says, “with alternate reality games.”
“Maybe so,” Cleve says. “But that’s no reason to do it in the movies.” He shakes his head. “I’m thinking you’ve got too many gimmicks all at the same time. Audience voting, augmented reality, releasing the picture as a serial…”
I try to stomp on Cleve’s foot, but I miss. I really want to remind him that it’s his job to get me paying work, not to crash a meeting uninvited and piss off the producer by criticizing her ideas.
“I’m inventing a new art form,” Dagmar says. “And I’ve got a hundred-sixty-million-dollar promotion budget that says it’s going to be a success.”
Cleve stares. Dagmar looks at him coldly. “I told you that we’re professionals,” she says. “Just because you’ve never seen any of my productions doesn’t mean I don’t know my way around this town.”
“Who’s putting up the money?” Cleve asks.
She contemplates Cleve with the same expression she might use to view a booger on the end of her finger.
“None of the usual suspects,” she says. “I’ll tell you when the time comes.”
Cleve’s fingers hook around the stem of his wineglass, as if he’s thinking about just picking it up and leaving.
He thinks Dagmar is bullshitting him. He’s never been connected to a project with that kind of budget in his life, and he’s not ready to admit that someone he never heard of can command that kind of muscle.
I must admit that I share his skepticism, to a degree. Three days ago I’d never heard of Dagmar Shaw.
But miracles do happen. And it so happens that I’m badly in need of a miracle.
“What is my part, exactly?” I ask. “Can I see a script?”
She turns back to me. “The script isn’t really ready yet,” she says.
“It never is, but that doesn’t mean I can’t read—”
“You play an archetype,” Dagmar says.
This intrigues me. I’ve never been an archetype before, and I consider how it might be challenging.
“Am I the embodiment of evil?” I ask. Because if you look like me, that’s something people might see in you.
“The opposite,” Dagmar says. “You’re sort of an angel.” She laughs. “I hope you’re not disappointed. I imagine villains are more fun.”
I laugh along with her. Angels are not what I expected.
“It could be a challenge,” Dagmar says. “Your character is not simply angelic—you’re tough, you’re fighting for your survival, but you’re also in service to—” She pauses for thought. “A higher ideal.”
“Interesting,” I say. This is more involved than I expected.
When you get right down to it, I would be perfectly happy playing the hero’s best friend.
The waitress appears, bringing me a plate of toasted rounds of French bread and a bowl of something that might be aioli. “Want some more tea?” she asks.
“Sure.”
The waitress leaves before Cleve can compliment her again, not that he seems in the mood.
“You’ll be shooting alternate versions of the
story,” he is saying. “You can’t expect Sean to do that for free.”
I’m getting even more pissed off. Cleve is negotiating, and this meeting isn’t about negotiation.
“Actors do alternate takes all the time,” Dagmar says.
“Not scripted ones,” Cleve says. “What you’re actually making is several different movies. You can’t expect Sean to get paid for just one.”
Dagmar’s eyes narrow slightly. “I expect we’ll be able to reach an agreement.”
“And we’ll have to talk scheduling. Because Sean is in demand elsewhere.”
Dagmar’s narrowed eyes now widen slightly, as if in surprise. I try to control my own expression, because of course my agent is lying his head off. Which is also his job.
Dagmar’s tone betrays none of the skepticism she must feel. “What am I going to have to work around?” she asks.
“Celebrity Pitfighter, for one thing.”
This time I can’t hold in my amazement. I gape.
“I lost my first fight,” I point out. “I’ll show up for the reunion show, and that’s the end of my commitment.”
Cleve turns to me and grins. “Nope.” He stabs me in the elbow with a knuckle. “Jimmy failed his blood test. You’re back in the rotation.”
For a few beats I’m paralyzed by horror, and then I blurt, “They blood-test?”
Because, you know, why would they? It isn’t like this is a real sport.
Cleve laughs. “They test the winners, yeah!” he says.
I’m staggered. “What was he on?” I ask.
“Ketamine. Which is a horse tranquilizer.”
Which would account, no doubt, for the utter indifference Jimmy displayed toward all my attempts to harm him. He was off in Dimension K for the whole fight.
“Jimmy’s going to appear on next week’s show to show his, uh, horse remorse.” He jabs my elbow again, and I rub my aching humerus. “He’ll tearfully apologize and withdraw from the competition. Then you’re going to get the news, and you’ll be, like, totally surprised and delighted.”
“Oh boy,” I say.
“They’ll be sending your script in a few days.”
So I can rehearse my surprise and delight. Naturally.
“That show got an eight share!” Cleve crows. “The best they’ve ever done.”
Yeah, I think, that was totally down to me.
Cleve beams at me as if I’ve just won an Emmy. I consider grabbing my agent by the ears and head-butting him. Because I’m getting in that ring again when Hell, or maybe the cottage cheese, freezes over.
Cleve is saved from a broken nose by Keisha the waitress, who arrives with our meals. Dagmar’s comes in a tajine, one of those conical Moroccan clay pots. Cleve’s steak sizzles on a metal plate. Ismet seems pleased with the appearance of his kofte. I get an empty soup bowl. I hope this is not a metaphor for my life.
With a dramatic gesture the waitress pulls away the lid of the tajine, and then she turns to me. “I’ll be right back with your soup,” she says.
I urge the others to eat and not to wait. “She forgot my malbec,” Cleve says.
Keisha returns with a covered tureen. Cleve reminds her about his wine, and she hustles off. I look at the assembly before me, the empty bowl, the tureen, the toasts, and the aioli-like substance. I take the lid off the tureen, and the aroma of garlic and saffron rises up from the orange-colored soup.
Ismet looks at the tureen with surprise. “Is that a Turkish soup?”
“It said on the menu that it’s Provençal,” I say.
He leans over the tureen and gives a delicate sniff. He seems a little surprised. “We have the same thing in Turkey.”
“Good,” I say. “Maybe you can tell me how to eat it.”
The stuff that I thought was aioli turns out to be garlic pounded with saffron till it’s turned creamy. Ismet instructs me to put this on toast, put the toast in the bowl, and then ladle the soup on top. I do this and take a taste. The broth is thick and rich. I taste tomato and fennel and olive oil and the sea.
“Very nice,” I say.
“It smells a little smoky,” Ismet says. “I’ll bet that’s Turkish saffron.”
Dagmar smiles. “Ismet has a cousin who deals spices.”
“He can get you a good deal,” Ismet says, quite seriously.
I take another taste. “I wonder how the same soup ended up in Turkey and France both?”
Ismet considers this. “At one point during the Renaissance a Turkish fleet under Barbarossa Hayreddin was based in southern France, because France and Turkey were allied against the German emperor. So my guess is that the Turks provided the bay and the saffron, and the French the fish and the bread.”
“Would you like some?” I nudge the tureen in Ismet’s direction.
“Yes. Thank you.”
He coats his spoon in the thick soup, then takes a tentative taste. A smile of remembrance crosses his face. I try to memorize the look, the eyes half-lidded in pleasure, the close-lipped smile, the reaction to the sound or taste of something familiar from the past, from childhood. I try to burn the look into my memory so that I can use it in front of the camera.
“This is very good,” Ismet says. “Much better than the kofte.”
“What’s wrong with the kofte?” Dagmar asks.
“I…don’t know for sure. It’s made well. It just isn’t right.”
Dagmar is amused. She looks at me. “Ismet keeps trying, but he can’t get kofte as good as they make at home.”
Ismet seems a little embarrassed. “Even ordinary kofte in Turkey is better than—” He flaps a hand. “Never mind.”
“I even got his mother’s recipe,” Dagmar says. “But it still didn’t turn out right.”
“The ingredients just aren’t the same over here,” Ismet says.
So Ismet isn’t merely Turkish in ancestry, he was born in Turkey. His American accent misled me.
Ismet makes a tentative gesture with his spoon in the direction of the tureen.
“Help yourself,” I say. He takes another spoonful, offers another blissful smile.
“Better watch what you eat,” Cleve tells me. “You’re going back into training.”
“So did you meet Dagmar,” I ask, “when you—” When you were terrorists is the sentence that comes to mind. “When you worked for Ian Attila Gordon?” I finish.
Dagmar and Ismet give each other an amused look.
“We met just before that,” Dagmar says. “I was running a game in Turkey, and Ismet was doing PR for me.”
There doesn’t seem a graceful way to go from this to bombings and murders and other terrorist activity, so I concentrate on the soup for a while.
After a while, Dagmar puts down her fork and looks at me.
“When can you test?” she says.
I’m about to say that I can test anytime, but Cleve jumps in ahead of me.
“We don’t audition,” he says. “Sean’s body of work speaks for itself.”
I find this more than annoying. Here I want to hurl myself to the floor and clutch Dagmar’s knees in gratitude, but my agent keeps throwing obstacles in my path.
Dagmar controls her irritation. “I’m not talking audition,” she says. “I’m talking test. I want to see him in the costumes, I want to see how we can light him. And I want him to meet some of the team and see what they say.”
“If the people on the team can say yes or no to Sean’s getting the job,” Cleve says, “then it’s an audition.”
“The people on the team can’t say yes or no,” Dagmar says. She looks at Cleve, and her eyes are hard. “I’m the one who makes those decisions.”
“We don’t audition,” Cleve repeats.
“Call it whatever you want,” Dagmar says. “Sean’s not my choice for this part anyway, and it’s no skin off my nose if he doesn’t want to put on a costume and stand in front of a camera.”
I can see Cleve mentally flailing around for leverage. The problem is that he has no tra
ction: everyone at this table knows I need the work, and everyone who’s seen Celebrity Pitfighter knows I have no pride. Cleve’s making a bunch of demands and inventing a bunch of conditions demonstrates only his own desperate need to be in control.
I decide to take charge before Cleve gets me canned from the project.
“I’ll test,” I say. I look at Cleve and shrug. “I don’t care. If it makes things easier.”
“Right,” Dagmar says, very businesslike, and then picks up her fork. “Glad we got that settled.”
“My work will speak for itself,” I tell Cleve.
I can sense thwarted anger radiating from Cleve like heat from a boiler. There’s nothing I can do about that, so I pick up my spoon and help myself to soup.
“I still haven’t gotten my malbec,” Cleve says. He furiously waves a hand at Keisha and growls in frustration.
Eventually the waitress brings his wine, and he settles down to a sulk for the rest of the meal.
After lunch, Cleve stays behind to try to wangle Keisha’s phone number. I hold the door for Dagmar as she steps through. She strides onto the sidewalk, walking in a businesslike way without a hint of the pregnant lady’s waddle. I remember a question I’d forgotten to ask.
“You said that I wasn’t your choice for this project,” I say. “If it wasn’t you, who picked me?”
She turns. “The director,” she says. “He’s worked with you before, and he wanted you.”
“Really?” I ask. “Who’s that?”
She looks up at me innocently. “Joey da Nova,” she says.
She absorbs my utter shock and frowns. “Is there a problem?” she asks.
Other than the fact I killed his wife, I think, none at all.
“No problem,” I say. “Tell Joey I say hi.”
CHAPTER FOUR
HEAVY LUGGAGE BLOG
Every so often someone asks me, “Hey, didn’t you have a hit TV series? Didn’t it make millions of dollars? How come you don’t have any money now?”
It’s not like I enjoy telling this story, so I’m only going to go through it this once. If you ask me any questions after this, I’ll just refer you back to this post.
The Fourth Wall Page 5