Squirrel Eyes (8 page)

12

I was surprised that she suggested going to her place, really; being cooped up with some kid all day, no matter how much I loved the little yard ape, would've made me grab any opportunity to sit in a bar and yell to be heard.

      We set out in our respective cars and Kelli led me to a tiny house in the north valley. I pulled into the driveway after her, then thought better of it and backed my mother's gigantic automobile out into the street, parking at the curb in case Kendra came home. 

A battered old Big Wheel sat in the front yard, one fat rear tire resting atop a stuffed animal. The yard itself was mostly dirt with a few scruffy patches of grass, and a circular rut had been cut around the perimeter by the endless Big Wheel laps ridden by Lydia. Kelli was already unlocking the front door as I reached the step. 

"The place is a little messy," she said, as all people must before allowing someone into their home for the first time. I gave the expected reply and we went inside. 

      
Messy
didn't do it justice. If I hadn't known otherwise, I would've assumed at least seven or eight people were crammed together like hamsters in the little house. It wasn't a disgusting sort of
filth
, like one might associate with the Manson Family or Guns N' Roses, but the level of clutter was truly impressive – kids' toys scattered in an even layer across the floor, laundry (status unknown) strewn atop the furniture, fashion magazines and children's books littering anything the laundry and toys didn't already. The only visible area of actual
living room
was a narrow pathway leading from the door to the hall, forking off toward the kitchen, and even this bore the occasional obstacle.

      "God, it's worse than I remembered," Kelli said, embarrassed.

      I yammered something about how it wasn't that bad, I'd seen worse – but I was honestly flabbergasted. What really struck me was the
girliness
of it all – as a friend of Taylor Merritt's, I had seen some horrific devastation lain upon various dwellings, but those rubbled nightmares were
all man
: pizza boxes, condom wrappers, girlie magazines, chunks of uneaten food; nothing approaching a welcoming environment. But
this
... the disorder here was almost cute, even
comforting
in some inexplicable manner. 

      "So where's that watch?" I asked.

      "Trust me, we haven't got time to mount an expedition," Kelli said, grabbing a handful of panties and other intriguing bits of laundry from the couch and tossing them somewhere down the hall. Following the path, she disappeared into the kitchen.

      I found myself unsure of what to do next. Stand? Sit in the place she had cleared? Take my pants off? I chose to stand, awkwardly assuming what I hoped might be mistaken for a casual posture.

      Kelli returned from the kitchen, carrying two large glasses of red wine. That's when I knew it was going to happen. 

      "Sit," she said, indicating the couch with one of the glasses.

      I sat and she handed me a glass, taking a seat next to me. I lifted my drink but couldn't think of a toast that didn't sound lame, so I just grinned stupidly. Kelli clinked her glass against mine and we drank to it. Instantly, every taste bud in my mouth leapt to its feet and made a mad dash for the exit.

      "Is this Kool-Aid?" I asked, smacking my lips at the appallingly sweet liquid.

      "It's all I've got," she laughed. "Sorry. Lydia loves the stuff."

      I'm sure, in that alternate universe I might've lived in had I wriggled my way into Kelli's pants back when I was a teenager, that the rest of the evening would've gone swimmingly. The set-up was perfect, after all, and Kelli certainly
seemed
like she was interested in taking care of unfinished business. So how did I manage to screw it up so tremendously? 

      I started off smoothly enough – we talked about Kool-Aid, and at what age one becomes aware that the stuff is nothing but colorful liquefied sugar, which somehow led Kelli to the time she let me adorn her nipples with Reddi-Whip (the delicious canned whipped-cream-like substance powered by the goodness of nitrous oxide) and lick it off. 

Definitely on the right track, yes? 

So I thought. Impressively (and incomprehensibly, I might add), she then leapt directly from nipple licking to this:

      "So tell me some Hollywood stories."

      My back teeth ground together as my libido did a Wile E. Coyote backpedal before plummeting off the cliff. I knew it would come to this. 

      "You don't want to hear that stuff," I said. "It's all awful."

      "Awful?" Kelli said, leaning forward with a trying-not-to-pee-her-pants look of expectation. "C'mon, now you
have
to tell me."

      Crap. Everybody loves to hear the I-saw-Ben-Stiller-buying-donuts stories, so I trotted out a few of those (hell, I actually
fell over
Ben Stiller outside a bar one night and looked up to find Vince Vaughn standing over me looking like he might kick my ass; luckily he chose not to, but in any case, the chicks always dig
that
one). 

Unfortunately, as much as she enjoyed hearing about my nervous inability to approach Joel Hodgson at a DVD store so I could gush over
Mystery Science Theater 3000
, what Kelli
really
wanted was to know how the old writing-and-directing thing was going for me. 

"You haven't told me anything about the stuff you've done out there," she prodded. "And after I suffered through all your movie antics when we were kids, I think you owe me."

I tried, I swear I did, but as much as I wracked my brain, I couldn't come up with anything that wasn't disheartening somehow.

I finally settled on the story of
The Drop
– far from the worst, but my favorite because it perfectly illustrated the fuck-you-you're-just-the-screenwriter attitude that pervades every aspect of the Hollywood machine. 

Whenever my agent would send a spec script out, I'd usually wind up doing a shitload of meetings (this was before the move to LA, of course, since the agent gave me the heave-ho once I was a resident). They all followed a standard pattern: I'd drive to LA, sleeping on the floor at a friend's house for a couple weeks, then get up each day and drive to the studio (this took as much as an hour, depending on which studio the meeting was at), check in at the reception desk, meet the development exec's assistant and accept their offer of a Coke, wait around for anywhere from fifteen to forty-five minutes, accept the assistant's apologies, then finally be ushered into the development exec's office, where he or she would tell me how much they loved my script but unfortunately it wasn't right for the company (or even better, they had "something similar in development"). Usually, they'd root out some other script that was mired in development hell, asking for my take on the material. Most of the time they have no intention of hiring Joe Nobody Screenwriter for the project no matter how brilliant his take might be, because what they
really
want is an A-list screenwriter – but they
do
want to keep you on the hook just in case another company buys your script and turns you
into
an A-list screenwriter. That way some other exec takes the risk, but they can happily announce they've got your next project. The actual time spent in the exec's office usually lasts no more than fifteen minutes, but when you add on the drive home (not to mention to and from LA) – and figure as many as six or eight meetings a week when you've got a spec script making the rounds – you can see how much this stuff eats into the time you could have spent actually
writing
. When I first started doing them, I enjoyed the meetings – how could you
not
, when movies are your whole goddamned life and it meant getting to wander around the lot at Paramount or Warner Brothers or Fox – but after a couple dozen of them, you begin to feel like a little kid who can't quite learn to keep his hand off the stove.

The script everybody loved in this case was a romantic comedy; each development exec I met with said it was the first script that ever made them laugh out loud and that it was the funniest thing they'd read all year. Under these circumstances, it seemed odd to me that absolutely none of these execs showed even the slightest inkling towards purchasing that hilarious motherfucking script. But since these folks adored my work so much, they were all interested in my take on their respective lifeless projects.
The Drop
was one of these, but somehow it kept hanging on, despite my less than A-list status. 

The development exec in question (let's call him Fenton) thought I'd be perfect to flesh out
The Drop
, an idea he'd come up with after seeing a TV report on cloning (
Cloning!
That one wore out its welcome back in the
seventies
, for Christ's sake). The fact that he didn't really
have
an idea beyond the cloning part somehow eluded Fenton, but I humored him and tossed out a few random suggestions, which he responded to with great enthusiasm. He asked me to write a short treatment and get back to him. 

As a veteran of many of these meetings, I knew the chances of the project going anywhere were slim, but what the hell, it's all part of the game, right? So I wrote up a five-page treatment, coming up with a set of characters and some semblance of an action-packed storyline. Fenton thought it was great, but needed a few changes. Those "few changes" snowballed into nine fucking drafts of that treatment – with no guarantee I'd ever see a paycheck – over the course of the next year, until we finally had a seventeen-page skeleton for Fenton's action-comedy clonefest. Then, amazingly enough, after four months of dead silence from ol' Fenton, my agent called and told me the production company was going to hire me to write
The Drop
, and for a fairly stunning amount of money, at least in my limited experience – plus I'd be making the leap to the big studios. 

I received an advance, with another check on delivery of a first draft of the screenplay (by the time my agent, my lawyer and the IRS had taken their share, there wasn't much left, but it was enough for Alison and me to move to LA). According to my contract, I'd receive another healthy wad of dough when I did the second draft, and a little more if there was a third. All in all, a pretty decent deal after putting in a year's worth of Good Faith work on the project. 

I threw myself into the first draft, producing some of the best work I've ever done – cool dialogue, inventive action sequences, tender romance; it was all there (which surprised the hell out of me, to be honest). My agent loved the script and turned it in without asking for any changes. 

And Fenton loved it, too – he just wanted a few "minor tweaks." After assuring me these changes – which he asked me to do "as a favor," with no pay – didn't amount to very much work at all, he sent me his notes.

Four pages of the goddamn things, in 10-point type, single-spaced. 

It amounted to starting over from scratch – as if Fenton had changed his mind about what he wanted the script to be since last we spoke, his attention span drifting with the breeze blowing at the previous weekend's box-office. My agent and I both felt this should be considered a second draft, and that, under the terms of my contract, I should be paid for the work.

Fenton – and I quote – was "appalled" that I would ask to be paid, especially considering the favor he did me by giving me the work when he could have hired an A-list screenwriter for his clone movie. So – after all the work I put in running on nothing but promises, and when I finally had a contract guaranteeing I'd be paid for my efforts – the son-of-a-bitch
fired
my ass. 

Because I wouldn't work for free.

      As expected, this particular Hollywood story had a less-than-uplifting effect on Kelli – and recounting it left me feeling unsettled, the sludge in my belly stirred up all over again. 

      "Can they do that when you have a contract?" she asked, stunned.

      "They word it so they can dump you whenever they want." I wanted to get past this Hollywood talk, find some way to steer the subject back to nipples – or at least Kool-Aid.

      "But you own the script, right?"

      "No, they hired me to write it, so it's theirs. They can do anything they want with it – hire another writer, set the thing on fire, whatever."

      "That's terrible."

      "I told you," I said. "Y'know, I never thought breaking in would be easy – I mean, I'm smart enough to know better – but I feel like I've been cornholed so many times that if anybody else tried to stick their dick up my ass, it would be like throwing a hot dog down a hallway." 

Telling the tale had caused my hands to tremble. I was certain that even worse would follow unless I set things back on track, but for some damn reason I couldn't staunch the flow of words.  "The whole business has just ... I swear, I don't even like
going
to the movies anymore. I want to chuck the whole fucking thing and get a day job, just forget I ever even tried to make it in Hollywood."

       Kelli looked like Santa had just come down the chimney and set her Christmas tree on fire – but only after urinating on the presents beneath it. Her expression – and my own sorry emotional state – prompted me to give her a friendly little smooch. It wasn't awkward, or untoward, or overly sloppy; it was just
nice
.

      So I kissed her again, a little longer this time. To my delight, her lips parted slightly for a tentative bout of tongue entangling, and I slid a hand across her belly to rest on her hip. 

      Then she pulled back.

      "This is weird," she said, her big, soft, stuffed-animal eyes dropping to her lap. 

      That's when the facade I was struggling to maintain deteriorated completely. "But doesn't it feel
right?
" I leaned in for more, ready to close the deal and set my life on the proper course (and was obviously willing to say the stupidest damn shit in order to make it so).