The men laughed too loudly at Rikki’s deadpan delivery, told him he was killer, then left as noisily as they’d arrived.
He read with the casting woman for another 20 minutes, with Fish giving him very specific notes, as if to make up for the disruption. It was only after Rikki left the office and was getting on his motorcycle that he realized he hadn’t said anything about their similar backgrounds or how much he loved the book Fish wrote and the movie they made about his life too — as he’d planned.
CLEAN [Bud]
The Player
“Thanks
for coming in, Bud.”
It’d been a long time since some showbizzer thanked him for coming in. Even though it was bullshit, it still felt good.
The offices of Ooh Baby Baby were in that luxe business pocket of Beverly Hills, a triangle made up of Burton Way, Santa Monica Boulevard & Doheny. The building was of the hipped up, minimal school, all concrete & open plan.
“It’s a little crazy around here. We usually cast somewhere else but it’s too boring to even talk about.”
On the way in, Bud noted a clump of gangly, nervous-looking black teens with script pages in their hands.
“Are they here for Michael’s movie?”
“‘Michael’s movie’! I like that.”
“I meant — the movie he wrote for you.”
“We’ve got two Fishes and two Michaels around here—very confusing. Tolkin’ll love that, Michael’s movie! In a sense, I suppose it is. Have you read the script? To Treasure? I’ll give it to you. It’s probably one of the most amazing screenplays I’ve ever read. Michael is writing on a beyond Aaron Sorkin level.”
“He’s pretty great.”
“Did you ever see The Rapture? I’m a huge fan of The Player—that opening shot? But The Rapture… I think it’s better. He’s an amazing director. The Rapture’s one of my all-time favorites & I only saw it for the 1st time when Michael came onboard. Fucking genius.”
Brando Brainard looked absolutely like a cheerleader — no: one of those tireless Jehovah’s Witnesses who go door to door — no: the boy that played the Music Man when Bud was in junior high. Whatever he was, he was American through and through. His skin glowed with capital promise, hard, hopeful, shiny as a Granny apple. He was 28 but looked 18. Brando’s fanboy élan, his peppy innocence, his unabashed verve were absolutely contagious — moreso when Bud refreshed the page to remind himself not just of the sweet kid’s billions but of Tolkin’s unswerving faith in the youngster’s proclivity to make a deal. Bud felt suddenly lifted on a cushion of air, as if to get a better view of the inexorable rightness of the world. It wasn’t so far a leap for him to see himself of the same class as Faulkner and Fitzgerald — a novelist preparing to moonlight as a screenwriter, for a little fast and easy cash.
“Here’s the deal, Bud. And I’m going to pretend you know nothing about Ooh Baby, OK? I’m going to pretend you don’t have a computer. That you don’t even know what a search is. Old school. That’s what I almost called the company, by the way. Old School. But my little brother liked Ooh Baby. So do I. It’s funny, people come in here looking for jobs — not screenwriters, people who just want to work in production. By the time they’re sitting in that chair, they’ve read so much shit on the Internet — and I don’t care if it’s favorable or unfavorable, I call it shit because it’s a shitstorm of information with no human context. But they’re somehow proud of themselves! Like they want me to know how much time they spent Googling. Really? So by the time they get in that chair, it’s like they’ve already had the whole experience. I’m like, really? It’s kind of like they’ve already worked here—because that’s how these people talk, like they know everything, which is true, but they only know everything the Internet told them — don’t get me wrong, Bud, I get the Internet, I’m a Millennial, I’m an Internet baby—but it’s like by the time they finish talking, I feel like, Wow, I either need to fire this person or give them a raise! OK. Sorry for the preamble.
“We’ve only been around two years and we’ve done very well for ourselves. Turndown Service made six hundred and fifty million worldwide, before DVDs, before anything. We’re going into television, we’re going into game design, we’re going into web content. We might even produce a Broadway show. So now we’re sophomores. And people hate us. They hate our money, they hate that we’re outsiders, right behind the smile, you can hear them saying Please God let him fail! Now we’re sophomores and those same haters who wanted us to crash and burn are praying we’re just a one-hit wonder. Funny, huh. Really? They want to see you in that sophomore slump—permanently. Really? Sorry, guys. Afraid we’re going to disappoint you. We have twelve movies in development and we’re about to start shooting The Treasure of Sierra Leone. You know what we’re calling our TV divisions, Bud? ‘Hard To Get By’ and ‘Just Upon A Smile.’”
“Hard to get by—”
“Hard To Get By Television is for limited cable, like Game of Thrones; Just Upon A Smile is for network — sitcoms and reality shows.”
“I love that.”
“Because you get it. And if people don’t get it, fuck em! Here’s the deal, Bud. Wanna know who came up with the idea for Turndown Service? And the title? Which is genius? My little brother Biggie. He’s 12 years-old. I shit you not. Wanna know who came up with the idea for The Treasure of Sierra Leone? And the title? Which is genius? Ditto. My little brother Biggie. Roger that. Do you know anything about savants? Mind you I didn’t say idiot savant because my little brother is far from an idiot, he’s fuckin genius. He’s king. King Baby. There are all kinds of savants. Musical ones, mathematical ones — you know that woman Claire Danes played in the movie she got an Emmy for? Temple Grandin? I just saw it because we want to put Claire into something. Amazing performance. People don’t know what Claire’s capable of, Homeland just scratches the surface. So when they saw her in that movie, they were, like, Really? People say Temple Grandin’s some kind of autistic, or Asperger, but I just think she’s a savant. Her thing is that she can get into the heads of animals, she knows what they’re thinking, what they’re feeling. My brother Biggie happens to be a savant of stories, not any stories, but Hollywood stories, stories that lend themselves to the big or small screen. We just sold one to CBS called You Rule, about a slacker who finds out he’s king of an island in the South Pacific. We actually have 14 projects in the TV hopper — I shit you not! — 80 % of which come directly from ‘MSW.’ My Secret Weapon!