We’re in Mexico, but we’re not smoking Mexican bud. Buying dank in Mexico is hazardous, largely because the dealer would likely turn you in to the cops, who in turn would put you in jail, then confiscate the weed and sell it back to the dealer. Plus of course there would be the embarrassment of having a major Hollywood guy busted in Mexico, with all the outcry and bribes that would involve.
No, this is 420 grown in California, where it’s pretty much legal, and smuggled to Mexico, where it isn’t, in boxes of film equipment. All of which is fine with me because California has the best of everything, including the best herb.
In fact I’m less than thrilled to be in a foreign country, where people speak a foreign language and have foreign customs and serve Mexican food that isn’t as good as the Mexican food I can get in L.A. But still, I’m a big international star, so even though I’m in a foreign country, everyone is treating me very well; and that’s better than being treated as a washed-up has-been in California, which is also within my experience.
We watch as Chip—the person who is somebody’s cousin—sparks the bong’s bowl and inhales a truly heroic amount of smoke, a binger big enough to keep him cross-eyed for hours … After an appreciative pause, Ossley says, “No, really. You have to heat the tequila up to eight hundred degrees centigrade, after which nanoscale diamonds will precipitate onto trays of silicon or steel. There are, like, industrial applications.”
“You’re just making this shit up,” says Yunakov, but by that point someone’s looked up the answer on their phone and discovered that the story is true, or at least true on the Internet. Which is not always the same thing.
At which time the 3D printer, which has been humming away in its corner, makes a final mechanical whine and then dies. Ossley half crawls across the tile floor to the machine and removes an object that looks like a thick-walled laboratory beaker. It isn’t entirely transparent: there seem to be yellowish layers made of slightly different materials.
“Okay,” he says. “Here’s my latest project.”
Ossley is a short man, five-four or -five, and thin. His hair hangs in tight corkscrew curls over his ears. Black-rimmed glasses magnify his eyes into vast staring Rorschach blotches, and five o’clock shadow darkens his jawline. He wears tank tops and cargo shorts bulging with tools, cables, and electronics.
Since he’s established his credibility by building James Bong with his machine, we pay attention to what follows. He goes behind the bar, produces an unlabeled bottle of wine, unscrews the cap, and pours out a glass. The wine is a deep blood red, so dark it’s almost purple.
“Okay,” he says. “Some friends of mine have a Central Coast winery, and they sent me this stuff to practice on. It’s your basic cabernet. The cab is only a couple weeks old, just old enough that fermentation has stopped. It’s been racked once, so I’ve filtered it to take out any remaining sediment, but otherwise it’s pretty raw.”
He passes it around and we all take a sample. When it’s my turn I take a whiff, and it doesn’t smell like much of anything. I sip, and as the wine flows over my tongue I can feel my taste buds try to actually crawl away from the stuff like victims crawling from the site of a toxic spill. I swallow it only because spitting on the floor would be rude. I pass it on.
“Two things would turn this into an acceptable wine,” Ossley says from behind the bar. “Time and aging in oak barrels. Oak is perfect for wine, and hardly any winemaker uses anything else. Oak allows oxygen to enter the wine, and oxygenation speeds the other processes that go on between oak and wine. Which have to do with hydro-hydrolysable tannins and phenols and terpenes and fur-furfurals.” The cannabis makes him stumble on the technical terms.
He holds up the beaker. “I’ve designed this to do in a few minutes what aging in oak does in months. So let’s see if it works.”
Ossley puts the beaker down on the bar, then pours the wine into it. He glances at us over the bar. “The reaction can be a little, ah, splattery.” He finds a plate and puts it over the top of his beaker.
“Now we wait twenty minutes or so.”
We go back to enjoying our evening. The bong makes another round, and I chase my hit with a beer.
Normally I wouldn’t get this chewed when I know I’ll be working the next day, but in fact I have no dialogue to learn for the next day’s shoot. All my scenes will be underwater, and I won’t have to talk.
Desperation Reef concerns my character’s attempt to salvage a sunken submarine, an effort made problematic by the fact that the sub is one used by a Mexican drug cartel to smuggle narcotics to the States. The sub went down with 200 million dollars’ worth of cocaine on board, making it a desirable target for my character, a commercial diver with a serious coke habit. Unfortunately the cartel wants its drugs back, and of course the Coast Guard and DEA are also in the action.
My character Hank isn’t a good guy, particularly. He starts as angry and addicted, but over the course of the film, he finds love and inspiration with Anna, the sister of one of the sailors who went down with the sub. In the climax, when cartel heavies come calling, he trades his coke spoon for a Heckler & Koch submachine gun and takes care of business.
What happens in the denouement is kind of up in the air. As it stands, the movie has two endings, by two different writers. In the first, the original, Hank raises and sells the cocaine, and he and Anna head off into the sunset many millions of dollars the richer.
In the second ending, Hank learns the important moral lesson that Drugs are Bad, he turns the coke over to the DEA, and he walks away with nothing.
The first ending, which everyone likes, makes a lot more sense in terms of Hank’s character. The second ending, which no one at all likes, is an act of cowardice on the part of the producers, who are afraid of being accused of making a movie promoting drug use.
Last I’ve been told, we’re going to film both endings, and the producers will decide during editing which ending will end up on the final film. Since film producers are notorious cowards, I figure I know which ending will end up on the picture.
Unless I make a stand or something. I could just refuse to film the second ending, or I could blow every take.
But then I’m a coward, too, so that probably won’t happen.
“Right, then,” Ossley says. He’s back behind the bar, peering at his beaker with his huge magnified eyes. “I think the reaction’s over.” He gets a glass and jams it in the ice bucket, then pours the contents of the beaker into the glass. From the way he handles the beaker I can see it’s hot.
The wine has changed color. It’s a lot brighter shade of red.
Ossley puts a thermometer into the glass and waits till the wine reaches room temperature. Then he takes the glass from the ice bucket, and he walks from behind the bar and hands the glass to me.
“Here you go, Sean,” he says. “Taste it and let me know what you think.”
The outside of the glass is slippery with melted ice. I look at it with a degree of alarm. “Do I really want to drink your chemistry experiment?” I ask.
“It won’t hurtcha.” Ossley raises the glass to his nose, takes a whiff, and then a hearty swallow. “Give it a try.”
I take the glass dubiously. I recall that, in the past, people have tried to kill me. People I didn’t even know, and all for reasons I didn’t have a clue about.
“You realize,” I say, “that if you poison me, the whole production shuts down and you’re out of a job?”
Ossley gives me a purse-lipped, superior look. “This is actually Version Six point One of the container,” Ossley says. “I’ve drunk from all of them. There’s nothing in there that will harm you. Not in these quantities, anyway.”
I hold the glass beneath my nose and give a whiff. I’m surprised. Unlike the earlier sample, this sure as hell smells like wine. Ossley grins.