The Comedy Writer (13 page)

I couldn't hold Colleen responsible for what happened at the Beverly Center. I was the idiot who'd smoked the joint. I was the one to blame, not her. Over and over I reminded myself of this. This is not to say that I wouldn't have loved to see her come down with a Third World-style bladder infection.

“You feeling okay?”

I groaned yes and said, “You?”

“Oh, I'm fine. My blood pressure's normal again. I can feel it.”

The crickety whir of a coasting ten-speed rose and faded into the night.

“So the businessperson you were supposed to meet with left, huh?”

“Yeah.”

She laid on an exaggerated guilty look and said, “Gulp.”

The lacerations on her face had dried and blackened, her chin was a blur of scabs. I took my tenth swig of mouthwash, swallowed a little, spit the rest into the bushes.

“Henry's my favorite name, you know.”

“Huh.”

“Yeah, in fact, I was gonna name my son Henry. I mean, you know, when I have one.”

“Don't worry, I didn't think you had a kid somewhere without a name.”

She pushed me. “You Rhode Islanders.” Then: “Hey, do you know Anna Gaye?”

“Who?”

“Anna Gaye. Marvin Gaye's wife.”

“How the hell would I know Anna Gaye?”

“I don't know. She used to come into this store I worked at. She's really nice.”

“Well, that's great to know. And so pertinent.”

“So
what?”

“Never mind.”

“What was that, some kind of insult?”

Suddenly she was all paranoia, leaning back, taking no shit,
feinting.

“It was nothing,” I said.

“Bullshit it was nothing. It meant something. What, do you think I'm stupid?”

“It meant nothing. It meant work on your segues.”

“My what?”

“Forget it.”

“Fine then.”

I looked back at my crotch and thought about what I was going to tell the
L.A. Times
girl, Jenna. I knew one thing: It wouldn't be the truth.

“You want to go to sleep now?” Colleen chirped.

Her rage had passed like the hiccups and she liked me again.

“Little while,” I said.

“Don't worry. Everything's gonna be okay. You could just reschedule your meeting.”

She put her arm around me and together we looked back down and stared, and after about twenty more minutes of crotch-watching, we went inside and Colleen jumped in bed and turned on the radio and she was fast asleep before my head hit the floor.

At five in the morning I was jolted awake, as if someone had stuck chocolate smelling salts under my nose. A small light was coming from the kitchenette and I heard the clanking of tin against Formica. I pulled myself up, shuffled toward the light. Colleen was crouched over the counter, her face inches from a fresh pan of brownies, the icing melting, steam still billowing from the pan, half of them already devoured. She looked up, startled, her cheeks smeared like a chocolate clown.

There was a beat, I didn't know what to say. Finally she blurted out, “I have an eating disorder.”

“Cool,” I said. “Whatever.”

She looked embarrassed and her chin started to quiver. “I miss her sometimes … okay?”

I nodded and went back to my spot and listened to the whine of the refrigerator through the floorboards.

I showed up at five to one, and while waiting at the bar I saw Tom Hanks and Teri Garr enter, not together. I ordered a Stoly soda, checked out the caricatures of famous people on the walls, then called the
Times.
Jenna wasn't in. Levine arrived fifteen minutes later looking sharp in a European suit, trailed by a group of similarly attired agents and studio execs. They joked around as they entered and dispersed to their own tables before I was able to gain any introductions. Levine wasn't a very good-looking guy, but he was certainly striking in that suit with the sunglasses and long hair and everything, and on the
way to our table I noticed the actress Nicolette Sheridan check him out.

After we ordered, Levine said to me, “I've decided to send you around town to meet people. I'm going to represent you.”

“Aw, man, great!”

I held out my hand and we shook.

“I reread your script last night. It's funny. I can definitely sell you as a comedy writer.”

“Comedy writer? Wait, can't you just tell them I'm a regular
writer
writer?”

“Why?”

“Well … they're going to be disappointed. I'm not that funny in person.”

“Comedy writers aren't supposed to be funny.”

“Huh?”

“If you were funny in person, you'd be a comic or an actor. Even the best comedy writers in town aren't that funny.”

“No?”

“Nah, they're just like you.”

“Oh. I can do that.”

“Yeah, you just have to be funny when you write.”

“Uh-huh, okay.”

“Now today I'm going to school you in the art of getting a job. To get a writing job, you have to know how to pitch, and to pitch you gotta know how to bullshit. Do you know how to bullshit, Henry?”

1 guess, “No, Henry, you
definitely
know how to bullshit. Remember Hal Markey? Trust me, you're a buUshitter. I wouldn't be working with you if you weren't.”

“All right.”

“And remember you told me how a major studio could make
How I Won Her Back
for around three million dollars?”

“Yeah.”

“That was bullshit. There's no way they could make that thing for under eight mil. They wouldn't even want to.”

“Well, I was thinking if they did it without big-name stars and—”

“Henry, stop it. You sound stupid. Seven to ten mil is rock bottom for a major. You don't know what you're talking about. For Christ sakes, you've got him playing poker with God.”

“An angel,” I said and I chewed on a slice of bread.

“Now as much as we both like this script, I'm sure you have a lot of other ideas, right?”

“Sure.”

“Like what?”

I shifted in my seat. “I don't know, tons of them. I write down new ideas every day.”

“See, you
do
bullshit, Henrv, and you do it fairly well. You're quick on your feet, that's why you've got a chance to make it. You and I know that you don't write down ideas every day, but those idiots out there don't. Now you're only gonna get one chance to make a first impression, so you better make the best of it. Even if you have to lie. Because whether you realize it or not, that's the business we're in: lying. Picasso said that art is a lie that tells the truth. For the sake of argument, we'll pretend that movies are art, too, and when you think about it, what are they? Just big lies. They're never real, they're made up, like a lie. Even the ones based on true stories have little lies in them. Most movies are
total
lies.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And everyone in this business lies, too. Every single one of them, they all lie. That's the first thing I learned when I got out here: Don't be afraid to lie. It's not like the rest of the world. Lying is accepted here. It's as much a part of the game as bluffing is to poker. If you don't like it, you don't have to play. Go play the slot machines, be an accountant. Moreover, lying is presumed here. If you don't lie when expected, it fucks people up. People lie so much in Hollywood that when they want to tell the truth they preface it with True story …' And usually they're
still
lying. Now of course there's bullshit, and there's bullshit. To do it right, you've got to believe it yourself.”

“Like daydreaming,” I said.

Levine blinked and said, “Whatever. Take the three-million-dollar movie. I have no doubt you actually believed that—even though you had no idea what the hell you were talking about.”

“True,” I said with a laugh. “I did!”

“Good, good. Now the next thing you have to remember is this, and I can't impress it on you enough: This town runs on one thing— fear. That's it. That's the whole ball of wax. If you figure that out— and I mean (A)
really believe it
and (B) understand the psychology of fear—then you're in. Any executive in this town will tell you it's a hell of a lot easier to say no all day than to say yes even once. Because when they say yes, that's when their ass is on the line. Which is why everyone decides by committee. They don't want to be the only one to say yes. They want a group yes. There's an old joke about the studio exec who reads a script and someone asks what he thought, and he says, don't know. I haven't talked to anyone yet.' That's what fear does—it makes very very bright people very very stupid. Give you example: If there were a flat, two-foot wide strip of metal on the ground and I asked you to walk along it
for fifty feet, you probably wouldn't have any problem, right? But if I took that same strip and put it a thousand feet in the air, it'd be another story. You probably wouldn't have the balls to try crossing it, but even if you did, if you mustered up enough guts to set foot out there, odds are you wouldn't make it. And the reason is this:
Fear impairs people's judgment.
That's your ace in the hole.

“You see, it really doesn't matter if your idea is good or bad because the powers that be are past the point of recognizing either. They're a thousand feet up, man! It could be the biggest piece of shit that ever came down the pike or the
Citizen Kane
of our time and they wouldn't know the difference. So what separates them? What gets
Wise Guys
made overnight and keeps
Big
sitting on a shelf for years?
You
, that's what. In that first pitch meeting you will insist on your own development deal and you'll get that development deal because fear is in the room and fear is your friend. They'll never have seen you before and that'll be to your advantage, because they won't have anybody to call to ask about you except me and I'll tell them you're the greatest thing since penile pumps and any idiot would know I'm hyping the hell out of them, but of course their judgment will be impaired by fear, so they'll be asking themselves, Is Henry Halloran a genius or just another scumbag with a powerbook crash-landing in Hollywood?' And you will look them in the eye and tell them that this is the best fucking idea they've ever heard and that they're fucking idiots if they don't go for it and I'll tell them that you're on your way to the next studio in a couple hours and so help me God you will have those skittish little worms calling up business affairs and offering you a Guild-minimum deal because forty-two-five is a pittance to pay some potential idiot when it allows them a couple months peace of mind before the finished script comes in and the entire committee decides whether to make it
or not. And their decision will be easy, because despite their blank stares and their standoffishness and their fear of saying yes, they're even
more terrified
of saying no to someone who has a clear vision and defends it ruthlessly, because if that young visionary goes out and makes that movie somewhere else and it grosses a hundred mil and turns into a cottage industry, then they're even more fucked than if they said yes to three
Joe Versus the Volcanos
in a row.”

On our way out of the restaurant, Levine stopped to schmooze Penny Marshall, who was digging into a plate of fruit slices and cottage cheese. I was standing there hoping for an introduction, which I didn't get, when suddenly I noticed who Penny was having lunch with. Geena Davis. I loved Geena Davis. She was beautiful, talented, she seemed like fun, and she was from Cape Cod. She glanced up, caught me staring. I nodded and she nodded back. I didn't want to bug her, but it seemed silly not to say something— Cape Cod, we were practically neighbors. Finally I rationalized it this way: If she wasn't famous and I knew she was from the Cape, I would definitely say hi. So I said hi.

“Hi,” she said.

“I'm from the Cape.”

Geena Davis looked at me, confused. “You're okay?”

“No, I'm from
the Cape.”

“Oh,” she said.

I could have told her I was from Cuntfartia, for all the enthusiasm this elicited. Levine glanced at me, but kept talking to Penny. I got to wondering if I'd been misinformed. Maybe Geena wasn't from the Cape after all. I said, “Aren't you from the Cape, too?”