Why I don't write movies anymore

Why I don’t write movies anymore
By Diego Abreu


Pt. 1-Engrish and a fucking book

It had been five days since Sara left me. I don't know, I can't even tell any more. It could have been five weeks for all I know. I'm gone for a week, one goddamn week and I come home to find her with some graduate student of all things. She left her boyfriend, me, the successful writer, the published author for some poor bastard English major who's writing his Master's thesis on, get this, a story about a writer who goes insane. Boring. My god, I nearly cried or I would've if Sara weren't such an undeserving whore. Fuckin' Graduate student.
"Roger, darling, your soups getting cold, and if you keep staring at that waiter he might think you're a gay"
"Hmm, what?" I slowly came out of my own mind and realized where I was, and with who. I was having lunch with my agent Haotori Toruwasa. I thought of her as an Asian Zsa Zsa Gabor, complete with cigarette holders and oversized Dior sunglasses, not to mention criminal misusage of the words "fabulous" and "darling". I had to admit though, that the old broad fought tooth and nail with me, hence the meeting with Universal today.
"Never mind my fabulous darling. Now remember you've got to impress the suits today. I want you to be on your best behavior."God, I don't think Tori even knew what an "r" was.
"You think they'll buy it then, Tori? I mean, it is my first script."
"It's a good script, darling," she pronounced it "skipt" "Its engrossing" I won't even attempt to explain to you how that word sounded coming from her lips. "Besides you've written books before, script shouldn't be any different."
"A book, Tori, singular, and that was easy to write. It was trash fiction, all I had to do was write a lot of sex, gore and bullets and BAM! bestseller. Listen Tori, I've got to go home and get my notes for the meeting. I'll call you right after, I promise." After air-kissing both cheeks I grabbed my Paul Frank jacket and left. I got into my car, probably the most obvious example of my ill-gotten fortune. I became an instant one-hit wonder by writing for the lowest common denominator, a book so trashy and dirty that I've been excommunicated by the catholic church, which is funny to me because I'm Jewish. It's about porno and politicians and blurs that already blurry line. It has a lot of senseless killing and many depraved sexual acts. Please note that I won't raise a finger to defend my novel, the only reason I even keep my name on it is because of the money it brings in which is considerable. I'd hoped they wouldn't bring the book up in the meeting at Universal. They probably would, I could never escape "Johnny Red", the titular character of my novel, a porn-star turned president in a post-apocalyptic United States. I hadn't really left my notes at home, I just couldn't take Tori butchering the language any longer. So now I had time to kill. Time to score.

Pt. 2- Pandas and Mailmen
I put on my wayfarer sunglasses and turned the ignition on in my Mercedes CLK 500. I drove to Dave’s house, an independent film-maker who until he gets to sell out, is also a drug dealer to pay the rent. I parked in his driveway and proceeded to knock on his door. No one opens. I knocked again and on the second knock the door opened. There was Dave, looking every bit the broke film student, and he graduated years ago. He was in a bathrobe and was holding a bowl of cereal in his hand. I lowered my wayfarer’s to the tip of my nose and looked at him critically.
“You look like shit, Dave.” He did, poor bastard hadn’t shaved in days.
“ You look like a faggot, Roger.”
“Touche.”
“ Come in.” Dave turned around and disappeared into the darkness of his house. I followed carefully avoiding the obstacle in my path. Needless to say, his place was a disaster. There were dirty dishes everywhere. Empty boxes of frozen dinners, which I assume he started using after he ran out of dishes. Empty beers were arranged on the dining room table to spell out “Fuck You”
“So...how’ve you been, Dave?” I asked, more to stop observing this fucking den of filth than out of any real interest.
“Eh, you know...the panda’s are still trying to hump my heart and the mailman didn’t bring the sauce yesterday so it was hard to get organized for it.”
“Wha...oh, cool.” I’d forgotten that Dave was crazy. He started taking LSD in college to “Open the Doors of Perception” and has been burnt out ever since. He usually made sense but sometimes he could come out with some really crazy shit.
“ I heard you wrote a movie.” It wasn’t quite a question coming from Dave.
“Yeah, I have a meeting today at universal. Listen, do you have any blow?” Dave of course ignored the question.
“ You should’ve told me man, I’m a film-maker you know I need a break into the industry.” Dave was now all hurt pity and I didn’t have the time for that. With Dave you had to be direct.
“They’re paying me $175,000 . You can’t even afford a quarter of that, look at this place.” I said straight to his face.
“ Fuck you fairies.” He muttered. I couldn’t tell if he was insulting me, since “fairies” was plural and also, he wasn’t quite looking at me.
“ Dave...” I had taken out $500 and spread the benjamin’s in my hand as if I were going to ask him to pick a card, any card. “...the blow?” his eyes focused on the cash. I was one of his best customers. I paid his bills and even with his deranged mind, he knew this. He went to his room to get the stuff. I sat down at his table and played with one of the empty beer bottles. Dave would be well off if he just dealt blow. Instead he put his hard-earned money into his shitty films. His last one, which he forced me to watch was about a government conspiracy to hold Einsteins Brain hostage because it controlled the universe. I’m not joking, and it was an hour long. That’s an hour I figure God Owes me. Finally Dave came out with an expensive little bag full of snow . He bowed, of all things and gave me the coke. I paid him and we did a line together. Now I felt I was ready to sell this movie.

Pt. 3- Kid’s Love the Future
It’s a miracle I didn’t get stopped on my way to universal because I was speeding the whole way. I slowed down a block before the gate but my heart was still racing. That was just the blow. At the gate the guard asked me who I was and I said “ Darcynski, Roger Darcynski” I felt like the mayor of Lame city for even thinking that I could pull off a Bond with a name like Darcynski but the guard just nodded and let me through. I parked and made my way deep into the Universal Fortress. By the time I’d gotten to this guy’s office I’d gone through five receptionists. After another ten minutes of waiting a pretty secretary appeared out of nowhere.
“Mr. Darcynski? They’re waiting for you in the conference room, follow me please.” Before I could even flirt with her she was off. She led me to some double doors where she gestured, smiled and walked away. I opened the doors to find the 12 angry men.
“She was on both knees and...oh,Roger!” Jeff Katz stood up to greet me. He was the greenlight man. The hold to the key. He shook my hand and introduced me to the rest of the room. He told me all their names and something personal about them but for the sake of convenience Ill just refer to them numerically.
“Roger here has a script for us which I think is great, just great.” By god, the man’s smile was a mile long and positively affixed to his face. “Roger is a best selling author and ohbytheway Rog, we’re all HUGE fans of your work, Johnny Black-“
”Um, Johnny Red.” I corrected politely as I could, considering I wanted to knock his amazing shiny teeth out.
“What?” he said, off balanced by my interruption.
“It’s called Johnny Red.”
“Well I only drink Johnny Black!” and Jeff starts laughing. They all do. I smile. “Oh that was funny” he nudged me with his elbow, I smile wider and node.
“ ‘Cause of the drink, Johnny Walked. That is funny.” I agree like a little bitch. Jeff puts a companiable arm around my shoulders.
“Ok Roger tell us about your script.” He looked to a fat little exec sitting down in front of him and whispered “ It’s great.” I got out from under Jeff’s awkward arms and passed out copies of my script as I began talking.
“ People always make the same style of cop movie. Nowadays it’s white cop insert-minority-here cop partner. Fish out of water stories, buddy cop stories. These films are as dry as an empty sponge on a hot day folks and frankly, people are tired of it. With “Dangerous”- That’s the title, I set out to make a new type of cop movie. Our hero is a mix between Inspector Harry Callahan and Sgt. Joe Friday. He’s old school, he’s the best and he’s never let a felon bug him till now. He falls in love with a woman accused of murder and the evidence points in her direction. He grows obsessed with her case trying to prove her innocence without letting his superiors know of his love affair..” By now I had them hook line and sinker. I could tell by the looks on their faces. I spoke over an hour, they asked questions and I answered them. It was going great.
“What about the explosions?” This came from the fat little exec who was flipping through the script.
“What?” His question blew me right off my momentum
“Explosions. I didn’t see any” The man’s beady eyes bore into me.
“Well, That’s because there, uh, aren’t any. “ This was my well thought out response.
“No explosions?” exec #1 looked to Jeff “ I don’t think we can do this Jeff.”
“No Bob?” Jeff had been quiet the last ten minutes or so. “ I’m sure we can work with Roger, make the script more accessible to all. I’m pretty sure Roger wouldn’t mind throwing in a few explosions.”
“ Damn it Jeff, we need a lot of explosions, you know the market.”
“Hmm, you may be right Bob, I do know the market. Well Roger, what if you added a lot of explosions?”“ Jeff’s Death Grimace smile was back in full force. I had blinked like a thousand times in the last minute. I was probably still feeling the coke.
“ You...want me to add explosions? It doesn’t really fit the story-” I began before another one of them cut me off.
“ What if you set it in the future!” suggested on bright-eyed, enthusiastic exec. “The kid’s love the future!”
“ It’s a love story, it can’t be set in the future!” I snapped before I could think.
“ There could be love in the future.” Exec #2 looked hurt that I yelled at him.
“ Jerry’s right” said Jeff “Kids love the future.”
“Yes but Jeff-“ Once again I began desperately, once again I was interrupted.
“ Hey, this guy’s book is pretty famous isn’t it? Why don’t we make the main character of his book the main character of the movie? That way we already have an audience in place.” To my utter disgust there was a roar of approval at #3's suggestion.
“I’ve never really read a book but That’s an awesome idea!” cried out #2.
“You want me to turn my book into a screenplay.” I could’ve cried. “ I refuse. I hate the fucking book, no way I’m going to turn it into a movie!” The room was in shocked silence
“Why not?” asked Jeff, inspecting his nails for defects.
“Why not?” I laughed hysterically “ So one day Ill turn on HBO only to see some queer like Jude Law playing Johnny Red in all his glory? It was trash fiction and it nearly killed me to write it. I can’t even really call myself a writer because of it and now you want me to make it into a movie? I barely survived the book, I’d have to shoot myself.” The silence in the room was tangible.
“Jude law is a good idea, actually.” Said the first fat little exec. I sighed.
“Look, Ill just go.” I started gathering my things.
“We’ll pay you $10 million for it.” Jeff was still fascinated by his nails. That stopped me dead in my tracks.
“$10 million?” I looked at him wondering if her were just pulling my chain.
“Sure.” Jeff looked at me with that obnoxious smile, picked up a contract and tossed it to me. Clear as day, $10 Million. Jeff offered me a pen and with a shaky hand I signed without even thinking. Whatever, $10 million can buy a lot of Kleenex.
“Ooh! Can we title it Johnny Black?”



FIN