In fact, he clambers down from the Humvee already giving orders. The G-lord declares, jabbing a finger in her face, that she ought to go into the store by herself: Sister, it’s all about mood.
She adjusts her glasses, her smile. Since when did she need anyone to tell her how to daydream? Nonetheless she has to admit that, once you got this guy out of the bedroom and over where the deals are made, he amounted to a decent contact. A useful connection in a company town. After all, Nola first came to him as a new hire. Now as she works up her game face, she’s thinking the same as he is, this swivel-hipped mover. She’s thinking how whatever he gets on camera today could be huge for them both, viral and huge. As big a deal as Madonna on Bandstand, when the teenyboppers discovered the singer wasn’t black.
Yeah, G, you get every last bit of bandwidth you can, and with that, bon voyage, ma bête. Take all your shadow selves and find another closet. As for the money, if she had to fight him, she could do that now.
Quick as a montage, she’s settled in. The ’Bucks has plenty of open seats. In a mall like this she’s a long way from a Venti and a madeleine, it’s more like a Slurpee and Twizzlers, and her sophisticate’s looks have drawn some glances. Every personality you put on demands its pound of flesh, doesn’t it, especially here where the racks alongside the café, the front racks, are all Religious Interest. The Lady Swee can check the titles from where she sits, here Glory on the Hilltop, there Stranger on the Roadway. Yet the store should have no shortage of other titles, as well as plenty of customers who carry their title on a card: editor, foley man, continuity consultant. Every standing surface in the world bears its dog-eared layers of pretension. And what about her own surface, this table before her, covered with a fresh stack of titles? Embossed, half these titles. What about the way she’s fallen again for their ridged and glittering promise? The first flip through her little library snatches Nola off into the not-unpleasant past, into that moment at ten or twelve years old when all things seemed to possess the same mystery, when she read as if seeping into the pores of story; and after that and a dollop of skim milk and French roast, lawd-a-mercy she’s off again, she’s riding the tepid but pliant stalks as they sprout, multiply, lengthen, as they take on hue and start to cohere, a flood of semi-liquids out of the agglomeration of paper before her, and it all bulks up at gusty and back-tightening hyperspeed till the whole behemoth of a halfshell is once more in place and she’s at her perch at the upper curve of the mall-dwarfing movie screen (and this time she’s alone, our Lady; whoever the store had on duty was too slow), and she can look up at today’s contribution to the landscape, her latest spectacular, where the images haven’t yet cohered, where she can’t even pick out colors, but she’s starting to get the voices: You want to see?… You want to see?
WRAP RAP TWO-STEP
Come on, let me hear you, empty board up here. You see the empty board. You know what we need. The story starter, the first inkling, the concept on the back of a business card. Now come on. And ah-one, and ah-two, and…?
Tired, is that what I’m seeing, a whole lot of tired? Just finding the auditorium was enough for one morning? Sure, and back when the seminar started, you had the perfect project for this. You had the winner, the movie of your dreams, with a narrative arc that curved overhead as clear as a cable car over the fairgrounds, gliding along and nary a hitch. Nary a hitch or a glitch all the way to sole screenplay credit, and then to the gold for Best Original, and then to a name above the title. Producer! Executive Producer! But now that’s gone, you’ve lost it, right here at the seminar. We’ve been shouting at you too long. We’ve been shouting all weekend, and come Sunday morning, it’s practically a miracle you could find the auditorium. It’s the wrap session, the final, and you’ve got nothing left.
Really, you think I don’t hear it, that whimpering in your head? That cryin’n’pleadin’?
Cryin’n’pleadin’ won’t do no good. I’ve heard it a hundred times, and every time, there’s only one thing for it. I need to do some more shouting.
Come on. Empty board up here. Ah-one and ah-two.
You there, what? Smalltown America, the smalltown South, and? And a teenager, sure, teenage boy of a sensitive nature. Okay. Okay, and stop groaning, the rest of you. Don’t I know it’s a fallback? But sometimes it’s a fallback and you land on a mattress full of money. I’m putting it on the board.
High school boy, not the most popular, and this single mom moves in next door. Single mom, and pretty, uh-huh. Doesn’t escape the boy’s notice, our sensitive boy, uh-huh. Even in the rental she’s got, a three-room junker, a rust-garden lawn. First time our boy stops by he starts talking about going to college. The neighbor’s a college girl, sure, an MA from NYU, no, an MFA, Fine Arts. Uh-huh. Just like that, our boy’s all bright lights, big city.
Okay, I get it, Sprout. Don’t forget I do this for a living. We all get it, everyone and his inner child, his inner thirteen-year-old. The kid sneaking around with a skin mag under his jacket. Anymore, don’t forget, a kid doesn’t need to sneak a magazine. Anymore, it’s just a log-on, you dream up a name and check the box that says you’re over twenty-one. But then there’s you, my child, my outer child. You, now, you’re going to go old school. You’re going to write longhand. You remember the notebook we gave you the first day? Your seminar notebook? Uh-huh, nice, wasn’t it, all those empty pages, and they’re still empty, aren’t they? Empty as a masturbator’s mind. And it’s time, now, you put something on that first empty page. Longhand, put it down: Never confuse your movie with your fantasy.
Lost in a fantasy, I mean, that’s the masturbator. That’s spending all day up in your cable car, up over the fairgrounds, riding back and forth. Back and forth and who gives a fuck? We sure don’t, or we’re not supposed to, here at the wrap session. The third day! We’re supposed to be making a movie. Filling the board, nailing the pitch, thrilling the house. But a rookie mistake like getting lost in your fantasy? Don’t you remember, the first day, we wouldn’t even give you a Starbucks break till you’d learned the Starbucks Pitch. We whittled your pitch down so you could slip it between the order and the pick-up. Till it was all snug and money and fit on the back of a business card. And after lunch we took you straight into Title Scrabble. Title Scrabble, where the Z’s no 10-point letter, not with Biker Boyz, Venus Boyz, Boyz N the Hood, not with EZ Streets. Not with EZ Money or Attack Force Z or World War Z. Or plain Z by itself.
Plus you’ve got to think different when it comes to the 2’s. 2Fast 2Furious, I mean, tip of the iceberg…
Okay, up there, in the balcony. You, yes, what? The neighbor, the new neighbor—you’re saying she’s black?