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Chapter 14 – I Wonder If He Would Foresee Wednesday February 24
Saul had sent the movie numbers for the week. We’d been pounded by Deadpool, which only did $132 million. We came in sixth at six million. He said that we had been pulled from theaters. Caryn had been learning more about the movie business and found a website called Deadline that seemed to have accurate information. Star Academy grossed $188.7 million in North America and $349.3 million in other territories for a worldwide total of $538 million, against a budget of $100 million. Deadline calculated the net profit of the film to be $91.6 million, after factoring together all expenses and revenues.
Both Saul and Caryn were happy. Star Academy’s numbers meant that I was now associated with an action movie that made money in my first venture into acting. Saul confirmed that was why I’d made the cut for the role of Han Solo.
I’d been given the information for the next audition in London. Mom had gone with me the last time I traveled to the UK. I was surprised when Dad stood his ground and said he was going with me this time. For some reason, Caryn claimed that since she was my manager, she would go instead of Kendal. Saul and his wife also planned to join us.
The James Bond movie was in limbo. I’d been signed, but there was a power play going on. EON (an acronym for Everything or Nothing) Productions had done 24 James Bond movies that altogether grossed over $7 billion. Columbia Pictures, a subsidiary of Sony Pictures Entertainment, and MGM had co-distributed the film series since 2006. MGM filed for bankruptcy in 2010; following MGM’s emergence from insolvency, Columbia had been its co-production partner of the series with Danjaq. That was until Sony’s distribution rights to the franchise came to an end with the release of Spectre.
Since the Sony deal ended, there’d been a fight to see who’d take over, or whether Sony could hang on. Daniel Craig, the lead, decided to play hardball. He had a small child at home and didn’t want to be away for eight months, as he’d been for the filming of Spectre. He floated the idea of doing two movies at once. The current offer on the table was reported to be $100 million for him to do the two films.
Saul was about to do a happy dance when he told me that. He said that he’d begin to lay the groundwork for future Bond films. If we got the first one done with me as the son of James Bond, he planned to push to have the old James Bond retire. Then his son would take over the family business. I personally thought they might just replace Daniel Craig like they had so many other James Bond leading men. With the success of Star Academy, Saul thought we had a good chance.
Secretly, I would love to be the next Bond. It was the type of part you would be typecast in and never look back. I might do ten films in the next eighteen years and retire a happy man at the ripe old age of 35. I’d then be old enough to run for president. Sometimes my fantasies ran away with me.
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At lunch, I did something I hadn’t done in a long time: I asked someone out on a date. This was the first phase of my plan to get a girlfriend. I needed to know my potential honey better. The girl I hadn’t spent enough time with was Zoe, so she was my selected victim.
Halle cornered me in our Principles of Business class.
“I need some info on your date with Zoe. Where do you plan to take her?”
I cocked my head.
“Look, I was sent because I told them you wouldn’t shoot me. Tracy told us how you reacted to some girl last year who wanted information on her date with you. Zoe needs to know what to wear and the rest,” Halle said.
She seemed to enjoy teasing me way too much.
“I hadn’t really thought about it,” I admitted. “I guess I’d take her out for dinner and a movie.”
“You realize our movie isn’t in theaters anymore.”
I gave her credit for keeping a straight face.
“Really? How will I work my magic if she doesn’t see my impressive package on the big screen?”
“You mean your big butt,” Halle corrected.
If Mr. Quiroz hadn’t been droning on about income statements, she might have been in trouble.
“Okay, wise one, what should I do?” I asked.
“Thank you. I was afraid you might mess this up. Dinner’s a nice idea, but you need to do something where you two can talk. Sitting in a movie won’t accomplish that,” Halle said.
“I could do what I did on our last date. I liked how that went,” I suggested.
How is it that girls can ignore what you say if they don’t like it?
“You could take her to church,” Halle suggested, just to be mean.
“Why don’t I just ask her?” I asked.
“I was only getting started,” Halle said, and then gave me a look. “When is my date?”
“You could come over tonight, and we could practice our lines,” I suggested.
“I accept, but I want a real date.”
“Okay.”
“Oh, and I’ll plan it. It’s obvious you don’t know what you’re doing.”
“I suppose I’ll have to take Brook out as well,” I said, trying to think things through.
“No. I don’t think Brook would want a date,” Halle said as she bit her bottom lip, obviously fibbing.
I just rolled my eyes. Halle wouldn’t be my go-to person to plan any of the other girls’ dates. I was smart enough to figure that one out.
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I was now skipping sixty minutes of hell to get in more baseball practice. Official team practices would start Friday, and our first game was on the road at Washington in only a few weeks.
I was lucky we had the Field House. It saved me from the drive to State to practice indoors in bad weather, and the weather at the end of February was hit-or-miss at best. The best part about it for me, though, was it made it easier to keep my focus on baseball. That was important when I found myself in the middle of an increasingly crazy schedule of other things people were piling on me. The Field House was becoming something of a sanctuary for me.
Well, maybe I was helping other people keep the schedule crazy. I thought if it got to be too much, and all else failed, I’d hide in Duke’s cage with him.
I was glad I’d talked to Moose early on. He had found a modification to the pitching machine that would allow it to hold a hundred balls now. It saved a lot of time reloading every couple of minutes. When I wasn’t batting, Moose spent his time showing me how to play the outfield. Center fielders tended to be smaller, fast guys. I was unique in that I had the size you’d expect your right fielder to have. Typically, your right fielder was a guy my size who was just in the lineup for his bat.
Moose wanted me to play a more shallow center field because he knew I could get on my horse and chase down longer fly balls. The advantage of playing a shallower center field was my arm strength. I could, in essence, support the infield up the middle.
The disadvantage was I had to react quickly. A line shot in the gap might get past me and turn into extra bases. Moose didn’t plan to have me play in this unusual position every time, but he wanted it to be in his bag of tricks if it were needed. There were specific situations, like less than two outs with a runner at third, where your infield tightened up to prevent the runner from scoring. He would then shift me up to help cover the ball up the middle. From shallow center field, I had the arm to gun down someone trying to take home.
The other thing Moose had me work on was stealing bases. I worked with the pitchers to get my timing down.
Moose was excited about the coming year. He couldn’t wait to be able to actively coach us. What he was doing now was like open gym. Of course, if you wandered over and talked some baseball, that was okay.