I took a few paces outside the glass office just so everyone could see how stressed and tortured I was, and then I returned. It’s called negotiating, as in “I’m negging with this chick so she’ll fuck me.” Not “necking,” negging. It’s gender neutral. We’ve advanced beyond courtship entirely, and the only romance to be found in this modern age is in rooms like this, glass offices full of Millennial executives with tight pants and bad facial hair. I shouldn’t have stared at everyone’s shoes—they so ugly, really atrocious—but I couldn’t help it. I’m not sure I’ll be able to make a career in a city where nobody reads and everyone’s stupid. I understand that, in Hollywood, one must always “be on,” but I don’t want to be on some bullshit. These people are making me be on some bullshit. It didn’t even really hit me until I got back home. Family means nothing to these people. Country? They don’t care. It’s one thing to say you’re all business and another to live that mindset in and out, every day. I don’t like the beach. I’ll never go surfing. I’m not interested in magical crystal necklaces. Los Angeles doesn’t have a lot to offer me.
Except money. They brought in another screenwriter while I was cogitating out in the hallway, although you wouldn’t know it, because they all look the same: beard, glasses, too-small flannel-print cotton work shirt, huge disgusting Apple Watch. Why do people wear Apple Watches? It’s like volunteering to wear an ankle bracelet. Michel Foucault had some questionable tastes, but he was bang on when he bitched about the panopticon. I wear a watch, a simple Casio. It tells the time. I don’t need my watch to count my steps. I have a brain, and, for now, some amount of short term memory.
The new beard spoke up: his name is, of course, Craig. I’ve met too many people named Craig out here. “We love the Quibitses—”—he’s already mispronouncing their name—“—and we want to bring them to the big screen. Isn’t that what we all want?” Everyone nods. “I’d like to make some money, too.” That was my attempt at a joke. It didn’t go over well. “I’d like to make some money, too.” Repeating the sentence with different emphasis didn’t help. Craig the Beard raised his hand—he really raised his hand, like we were in pre-school. “What about your script? You said you already have a script? Let’s look at it, let’s read it—” I reminded them my script was the one sitting in piles in the corner, everyone’s carefully bound copy collecting dust in the corner. I knew no one in here would read it, but why show it off? I understand being humiliated is part of the culture in Hollywood, but this is too much—or rather, too petty. Just tell me to screw myself and fly home. What is this dance they keep doing?
“Let’s try working on a draft together. Have you ever written with someone else before?” I was steaming. “No,” I said, “and I’m not thrilled by the prospect.” Nobody in the room knew what that meant, so Craig the Beard pushed on. “We want your voice in this, not just your blessing. We know how much your fans love you.” “They don’t love me,” I reminded them, “they love the Quibbitses. I’m not even an item in their eyes. Who cares about the translator? Do you know who James Grieve is? Never mind—” I don’t know why I thought it’d be appropriate to reference Proust, but I did, and yet again, no one noticed. “Look, people love the Quibbitses: Rooster, Monica, and Bennington. We really should meet in Baltimore so you can talk to them and get a better sense of what they will and won’t be comfortable with. I can guess, but I honestly don’t know. Some of these ideas are terrible, I have to be honest, but maybe they’ll like them, and if they like them, I’m okay with it.”
Craig the Beard got up and left the room without saying a word. One of the silent executives, a bit fat and wearing a baseball cap, finally spoke up. “With all due respect, you’re an unknown. You’re ‘raw,’ and while we like ‘raw,’ you’ve never written a screenplay that made it to production.” I was flabbergasted. “Wow, WRONG! I’ve written and directed three features! Hasn’t Been Grounded played at the Dos Lagos Film Festival in 2022. Weren’t any of you there? It was in Corona, and I know that’s closer than Anaheim!” The exec in the baseball cap snorted. “We don’t make it down to Anaheim much.” I asked if he was a Dodgers fan. Blank stare. “I don’t like baseball.” “Then why are you wearing that hat?” “This isn’t a baseball hat.” “Yes it is. It has the Yankees logo and everything.” “It’s just a hat.” “Oh, okay. ‘It’s just a hat.’ What if I came in here wearing a fez?” None of them responded, and I wasn’t about to get racial, so I simmered down. Mr. baseball hat took the floor.
“Have you written anything else that we can read?”
This one I was ready for. “Yes—in May 2020 I adapted a Philip K. Dick novel.”
“Which one?”
“Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said.”
“That’s been done.”
“No it hasn’t.”
“It was referenced in Southland Tales.”
“So?”
“Southland Tales didn’t make any money. It’s tainted.”
“By what?”
“Association.”
I really didn’t know what to say. Another one of the silent execs, clearly a Boomer, started playing Good Cop. “We’d at least like you to take a look at some of the conceptual art we’ve come up with.”
I was confused. “Conceptual art for what? This isn’t an animated film.”
Everyone laughed. They actually laughed. At me. Not with me, at me!!
“How else are we going to make a movie about three talking chickens?” I let the slur slide. Nobody will ever understand my struggle. Nobody.
The Boomer exec wants to make money and knows how to do it, this I know. Or believe. I don’t trust the Millennials with beards who throw axes for fun and think Taylor Swift is a feminist icon. The Boomer saw Dylan. The Boomer went to Woodstock. The Boomer overdosed on hard drugs at least once. We may not agree, but he knows what he’s talking about, certainly more than I do. “Fine,” I said, “let’s see your conceptual art.”
—Follow Nicky Otis Smith on Twitter: @NARCFILM