Forty returns, iPad in hand. “Check it out, Old Sport,” he says.
And it’s like Calvin redux. I recognize the Funny or Die logo and I groan but Forty promises this is gold. The opening titles roll, followed by Liam Neeson and son in Love Actually and my heart rate quickens—that’s my idea—and they’re on the couch, watching Kate and Leo in Revolutionary Road—my idea!—and the screen rolls black and I see words I like, words that belong together, the way happily married people do:
Written and Directed by Joe Goldberg
Love is laughing and clapping and I hug Forty and shake his hand and thank him but he tells me not to thank him. “This was all you, Old Sport!”
“But I didn’t do anything,” I protest. “I just had an idea.”
“Bullshit,” he says. “You had an ending. Everyone has a beginning, but you are the guy who knew how it ended.”
He hands off my film to Barry Stein. A new life is possible for me and I see how it is possible to become infected with aspirations. I might be discovered like Mark Wahlberg in Boogie Nights before he fucks it all up. But Barry Stein calls my video cute. I seethe. Once upon a time in New York I was
Different, hot
And in Malibu according to that dirty old fucker, a purveyor of hokey, dated, prefab rom-comedies, I am
Cute.
It’s a buzzkill. The conversation drifts away from my movie. Barry Stein taps his cigar, then hands them out to Ray, Forty, and Milo. He doesn’t offer one to me. Forty picks mint leaves out of his teeth and runs his hands through his hair. He is hurt; he didn’t like cute either.
“So I have this idea,” Forty says, and Barry says he needs to use the restroom and Milo needs to find his sun block and Love needs to help her mom.
I look at Forty. “Cute my ass.”
Forty smiles. “Right on, Old Sport, right on.”
He starts telling me about a script he’s working on and I want to believe in us and I want to believe this is the start of something. But Forty’s idea is terrible. In the irredeemable, maybe-he-needs-a-shrink kind of way where you know there is no possibility of him ever having any kind of success as a storyteller. Love was right when she said their ideas are terrible. This “idea” is called The Third Twin.
“Not me and Love,” he says. “Two guys, identical, they both have tattoos on the backs of their hands from when they were babies and their mom couldn’t tell them apart.”
It’s a special thing, when someone who can’t tell a story tries. First the twins are in their mid-twenties and they’re in Los Angeles and then he’s describing a scene on a dark street in New York.
“And the title card smashes, boom,” he shouts. “The Third Twin.”
Oh God, we’ve only just begun. Love and Milo head out to the tennis courts and I am in the right place, in the wrong place. “I think you mean triplets,” I say. “There can’t be three twins, but there can be triplets.”
“But that gives the whole plot away,” he gasps.
He runs his hands through his hair and somehow the screenplay moves forward and we’re in Vegas and The Hangover walks into Scorsese’s Casino. “You feel me, Old Sport?”
No wonder Forty has never sold a script. I glance at his iPad where he has drawings and notes. Not all messy people are geniuses. Some are just messy. My heart breaks. “Vegas,” I say. “Who’s getting married?”
He stands. He hoots. “You know it! Psychic! Instincts! Professor Old Sport!”
He looks around to see if Barry Stein is watching and Barry Stein is still not watching. On the court, Love allows Milo to drink out of her water bottle. Forty keeps talking and the third twin emerges out of nowhere in the desert to kill the twin who’s driving to Vegas, trying to save his brother’s life and then we backtrack again. Forty forgot a critical scene.
“Joe,” says Forty. “Picture this. The third twin”—and JUST CALL IT A FUCKING TRIPLET—“dives into a swimming pool and we stay with him as he sees the brightness above, the pool party, the music soaring from eight-tracks.”
“I thought the movie was set in the present?”
He doesn’t miss a beat. “Sometimes,” he says. “And other times we’re in the future. Or the seventies. It’s a nonlinear narrative.” Love whispers something in Milo’s ear. “So the third twin emerges from the pool reborn. And this is when it gets scary. You ready for this?”
Dottie rings a cowbell and Love waves at me to come but she doesn’t wait for me when Milo prods her to go inside. I tell Forty we should follow and he looks at me.
“Dude,” he says. “I got cut.”
I raise my eyebrows. “You’re not in the episode?”
“My mom digs a celebration,” he says. “Everybody’s stoked. They’ll watch it, they’ll think they missed me. Everybody wins. I mean, I read for it, I could have nailed it but it’s just as well. First agent I ever had, he warned me. As a writer, it can fuck up your shit if you act.”
Dottie rings the bell again and Forty promises we’ll be there in two minutes. He says we have to run out to pick up a prescription for me and Dottie says we can send someone to do that and Forty says it’s a new drug and Dottie sighs. “Be fast, boys.”
Forty and I walk to the embankment where the cars are all tossed around like hungover partiers. Forty says eenie meenie minie mo and he settles on his Spyder.
“Where are we going?” I ask.
He grabs the keys and revs the engine. “Mexico, Old Sport. Meh. Hee. Ko.”
We leave.
25
OF course, Forty was being hyperbolic and we’re not actually going to Mexico. We are leaving a paradise of canapés and fish tacos and caipirinhas to go to Taco Fucking Bell.
I picture everyone back at the Aisles in the screening room. I hope Love isn’t sitting on Milo’s lap and why does there always have to be a Benji, a Henderson, a Milo? Milo is going to be a problem and when I Google him, it’s a string of irritating things, screenwriting awards, contributions to Vanity Fair, his psychotically eligible bachelor status in Nylon. I hate knowing that Milo made it in Hollywood and anyone who says he doesn’t get jealous is lying. We pull into Taco Bell and Love texts: Are you on the way back?
I read it out loud to Forty.
“Tell her we hit beach traffic.”
I look at the open road. “Seriously?”
“You’re right,” he says. “Tell her I’m being an asshole. She’ll know what that means.”
“Forty,” I say. “Maybe you should text her.”
“I’m driving,” he says as he pulls into a spot and turns off the engine. “Seriously, tell her I’m being an asshole. She’ll know what that means. It’s all good, Old Sport.”
So I tell Love that Forty is being an asshole and she writes back ughghhghhhghg and says she will cover and we get out of the Spyder and amble across the parking lot into Taco Fucking Bell. Inside, we sit at a booth and Forty tells me about his other script, The Mess. “It was on the Blacker List,” he says. “That’s a more top secret list than the Black List.”
I look at him. “What’s the Black List?”