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gets us coffee and Cokes and phones in lunch. She is very ac-
commodating, and I wonder if she s just a good employee or if
the producer is fucking her. On the wall behind the producer s
desk are glossies of old movie stars. Bogart. Jimmy Stewart.
Jane Russell. Now and then I glance at these photos while we
talk, and now and then, though I know better, I steal a look at
the assistant. Once she catches my eye and smiles.
When our meeting is over I leave the office determined to
do a good job. I am prepared to be merciless. I am prepared to
cut and chop. To rearrange scenes, create new ones, eliminate
others. I work long hard hours and in three months I ve whit-
tled a three-hundred-page novel down to a hundred-and-ten-
page screenplay. But the heart of the book is still there. All the
characters survive intact.
 You certainly know how to write a screenplay, the pro-
ducer tells me after he s read it.  But it s too dark. I think we
need a fresh eye on this.
In short, I am fired and a fresh eye is hired. In this writer s
version the oldest brother, the aspiring actor, is now the lead
singer of a rock band. The middle brother is the bass guitarist.
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The youngest, the runaway, is the drummer. They aren t tough
kids anymore. They aren t even poor.
That writer is fired.
So is the producer. The executive in charge of the project
takes it on herself to hire another writer. This one does a fine
job but by the time he s finished the executive has also been
fired and the woman who replaces her has her own agenda. Un-
fortunately that agenda does not include making my novel into
a movie and it soon falls into that netherworld known as
 turnaround, where the costs of another company acquiring
the project are astronomical.
The option lapses.
My phone stops ringing. My book mysteriously disappears
from the bookstores and a few weeks later I receive in the mail
another rejection from the New Yorker. Because I m depressed I
run out and buy more drugs and alcohol. I invite my friends
over to take my mind off things but half of them don t show
up. They re lightweights. The party continues without them.
D E A L I I
I am thirty-six years old and a little less confident. When an in-
dependent producer in New York options my third novel I am
excited but cautious. In a year or two they might make the
movie. Because it will be shot on a small budget, and because
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it will be only moderately successful, I can expect this novel to
sell better than my last but by no stretch will it land on the
best-seller list. I might appear on a local cable talk show.
Maybe it will be a kind of cult hit. Above all the New Yorker will
undoubtedly catch wind of this independent sleeper, recognize
me for the undiscovered talent that I am, and publish one of
my short stories. In the meantime the celebration begins. I run
out and buy an eight-ball of methamphetamine because it is
cheaper and stronger than coke, a few cases of Budweiser, a
half-gallon of Smirnoff, Dewar s scotch and Seagram s 7 and
invite my friends over for a party. But most of them are busy
for some reason, and what few do show end up leaving early
when I make an ass of myself. They re lightweights anyway.
This time the novel I sold is about an old man who runs a
little theater out of a hotel in downtown Los Angeles, a hotel
that s slated for demolition to make way for a freeway. He and
his friend, a young alcoholic playwright, attempt to stage one
last production before the building is razed, and time is run-
ning out. Of course there s more to it, a lot more, which is one
of the problems in adapting it into a screenplay. But I m will-
ing to try.
The producer flies out from New York and we meet at
Starbucks in Brentwood. He is an older, impeccably well-
dressed gentleman, and he stands out in this crowd of mostly
college students dressed in tank tops and flip-flops.
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J a m e s B r o w n
 You realize, he says,  that there ll have to be some changes.
 What kind of changes?
 Don t worry, he says.  They re nothing major.
He takes a sip of his coffee. He sets it back down and dabs
his mouth with his napkin.  For instance, he says,  I don t
think the young playwright should be alcoholic. Alcoholics are
detestable people and don t make for likable characters.
I wonder if he realizes that he is working with one. I won-
der if he notices that my hands tend to shake around the time
it is now, happy hour, a little after five o clock. I need a drink
but any suggestion I might ve had of carrying this meeting over
to the bar across the street is dashed.
The producer is an articulate, intelligent man, and during
the course of our meeting he gives me several pages of notes,
all of them insightful. I want to do a good job, and once more
I m willing to mercilessly cut and chop, create new scenes and
eliminate others.
Inside of six months we have a strong screenplay with the
original vision of the novel still intact. The producer shops it
around to actors, directors and studio executives. A year passes.
No luck. The call comes from Vermont, where he s vacationing,
and I can sense by the tone of his voice that he s given up.
 You wrote a good script, he tells me.  But they re all say-
ing it s too soft.
My phone stops ringing. My book mysteriously disappears
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from the bookstores. I think it s all over and then out of the
blue he phones again to tell me, in short, that I m fired.
 What I think we need, he says,  is a fresh eye.
The new draft arrives in a manila envelope a couple of
months later. The story, which originally took place in down-
town Los Angeles, now opens in the jungles of Vietnam. But
I m not shocked. I m not angry. I set the script aside after read-
ing a few pages and reach for the other manila envelope that
also arrived in the day s mail, the one with my own handwrit-
ing on it. It s from the New Yorker, and I m hoping, as I split the
envelope, that someone has been kind enough to include a
word of encouragement on the rejection slip enclosed.
Because I m depressed I invite my friends over for a party
to help take my mind off things. But no one shows up. It s just
as well. This way I don t have to share my dope and alcohol. I
party alone with a gram of meth and a half-gallon of Popov s
vodka.
D E A L I I I
I m forty-three years old now and not so hopeful anymore.
Maybe I am even a little bitter. When my fourth novel is op-
tioned by another independent producer, this one from Lon-
don, I am guarded. Before the year is up I ll deliver what I
believe is a decent screenplay and then I ll be fired. Because the
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movie probably won t get made, and because my book proba-
bly won t sell any better than my others, I ll bank the money I [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]