Page 18 of All That Glitters

Chapter fourteen

A Not-So-Bright Idea

“Neil, please,” Eli pleaded. “I’m begging you. On my knees. Metaphorically, of course. These pants are Armani.” He sidestepped mountains of screenplays on the floor as he paced Neil Bergman’s office at the Starving Artists Agency with the desperation of a caged tiger.

Neil Bergman, a calmer, more seasoned agent, watched from the relative safety of his leather chair with a faint, knowing smile. Unlike Eli, who treated his job like a fire drill with seconds to spare, Neil had the patience of a man who had seen everything Hollywood could throw at him.

“The girl’s driving me crazy,” Eli continued, running a hand through his already disheveled hair. “I can’t sleep. I can’t eat. My stomach lining is dissolving. My doctor thinks I have an ulcer, but it’s not an ulcer — it’s Carrie Thompson. She’s an ulcer in human form.”

“This is sweet little Carrie we’re talking about?” Neil asked. The sarcasm wasn’t lost on Eli.

“Sweet, my ass,” Eli grumbled, stepping around a pile of rejected screenplays that had grown so large, the assistants called it ‘Mount Failure’. “Try raging bitch monster from hell.”

Just then, a mailboy, completely oblivious to the high-stakes drama, walked in and dumped a fresh new stack of mail and screenplays onto Neil’s already cluttered desk. The addition of the new scripts caused a minor avalanche, sending a stack of old ones tumbling to the floor.

“So what’s she want?” Neil asked, calmly sipping his green tea.

Eli stopped pacing and began ticking items off on his fingers. “Anything that doesn’t have a number in the title. Or the words sorority, cheerleader, sluts, bimbos, planet, killers, babes, hotties, or vixens.”

“So, an actual movie?” Neil said.

Eli nodded. “She wants, and I quote, something that will showcase her depth.”

Neil eyed him curiously. “Can she act?”

Eli thought about it for all of two seconds. “She looks hot in a bikini.”

Neil couldn’t help being amused at Eli’s distress. “But can she act?”

Eli just took a breath and shrugged. “How would I know? Casting directors call looking for a hot blonde, we send them her pic, and boom! She’s cast. It’s always been that simple. But now, she’s decided she actually wants to act. Like, show emotional range and all that nonsense.”

“Sounds like you’ve got a problem,” Neil said.

“Which is why I’m here begging.” Eli leaned over the desk.

“Neil, please. I’ll get you tickets. Drugs.

Booze. Hookers. You name it. I know a guy who can get us backstage at the Grammy’s.

I’ll detail your car. I’ll be your personal assistant for a month.

Just find me one script. One decent script for her. ”

Neil let out a long, weary sigh. “Alright, Eli,” he said, finally relenting. “I’ll keep an eye out. But no promises.”

A wave of pure relief washed over Eli’s face. “Neil,” he breathed, “if you had boobs, I’d hug you.”

“Lucky for both of us I don’t,” Neil replied dryly. “Now get out of my office before you knock over Mount Failure.”

As Eli backed out of the office, still muttering his thanks, Neil began sorting through the new stack of mail.

Most of it was the usual dreck — query letters from writers who thought they were the next Aaron Sorkin, bills that needed paying, invitations to industry events he’d never attend.

He paused, his eyes landing on the return address of a thick manila envelope.

“Do you know someone named Tony Harding?” he called out to Eli, who was still in the doorway.

“Tony Harding?” Eli repeated, mentally scrolling through his Rolodex of Hollywood contacts. “Never heard of him.”

“Me neither,” Neil said. He shrugged and, with no more thought than he’d give to a junk mail flyer, tossed the envelope onto Mount Failure.

If Tony thought the hard part was behind him when he finished his script, the daily mail came as a rude wake-up call. It turned out that selling his script — or even getting someone to read it — was proving to be considerably harder.

Each afternoon, he would shuffle out to his mailbox to fetch his mail; and each afternoon it would be the same story. Mixed in with the heaps of junk mail, credit card offers, pizza fliers, and student loan notices, would be a form letter from an agency that read something like this:

‘Thank you for your submission. While we appreciate your interest, we are unable to accept unsolicited manuscripts at this time. We wish you the best in your writing endeavors.’

Tony had shrugged them off at first, taping them to his living room wall in a ‘wall of shame’ he could look back and laugh at later.

Only now, he had received so many of these rejection letters, his wall of shame was threatening to spill over into a ‘ceiling of shame,’ ‘refrigerator door of shame,’ and maybe even a ‘bathroom mirror of shame.’

As Tony was finding out, the trick to breaking into Hollywood was to know someone who was already in; and for Tony, that answer was nobody.

He didn’t even know anyone who knew anyone.

His sole connection to the film industry was a Netflix subscription he shared with Jeff and Matt, and a DVD collection he couldn’t find a player for.

If he was going to do this, it would require some creativity.

As was often the case with Tony’s hair-brained schemes, the idea for Plan B (he was calling his mass script mail-out Plan A) came to him after several beers.

It seemed simple enough on paper — since everyone approached agents and producers at their offices, why not be original and approach them at their homes?

Genius, right? And of course, being Tony, he wasted no time in getting started.

Sunrise the next morning found Tony’s truck parked in a luxurious Beverly Hills neighborhood, sticking out like a black eye amongst the lavish mansions, manicured lawns, and palm trees.

Inside the truck, an old-school alarm clock rattled violently on the dashboard, with a noise somewhere between a jackhammer and a dying cat. A hand reached out from beneath a ratty wool blanket on the front seat and smacked it into silence.

Tony crawled out from beneath the blanket, his hair a mess and shirt a topographical map of wrinkles.

He looked around at the sleeping mansions, like a hunter peeking out from his blind.

The neighborhood was quiet, with only the occasional gardener or housekeeper arriving for the day’s work.

No producers in sight yet. But hopefully soon.

Since he arrived in LA too late that night to buy one of those ‘maps to the stars’ they sold on Hollywood Blvd.

, Tony picked a Beverly Hills neighborhood at random.

The plan was to stake out the neighborhood and hand copies of his script to everyone he saw.

Through sheer numbers, it had to eventually fall into a producer’s hands.

Tony climbed out of his truck and shook the numbness from his legs.

He brushed the Doritos crumbs from his crinkled shirt and gave his armpits a quick sniff.

He winced. He would need to stay downwind from whoever he approached.

Or maybe he could just stand across the street and throw his scripts at them?

Naw, he thought, that might come across as a bit psycho. The irony was completely lost on him.

Tony grabbed a travel-size deodorant from his overnight bag and applied it liberally under both arms. Then on his neck and pants. It was like trying to put out a forest fire of odor with a water pistol, but it had to be better than nothing.

Just then, a heavy iron gate groaned open across the street.

A gray-haired man in a plush silk bathrobe and leather slippers strolled out to grab the newspaper from his driveway.

He was Morgan Fisher, and yes, he was a producer.

But not just any producer; he was the kind of producer whose weekend barbecues were covered in the entertainment pages, whose divorce settlements made headlines, and whose name appeared above the title on blockbuster films. He was exactly the kind of person who could change Tony’s life with a single phone call.

Tony spotted the man and quickly grabbed a copy of his script from the truck. He had no idea who this guy was, but something about him just smelled of big-money Hollywood. Or maybe that was just Tony’s B.O.

Tony raced across the street with his script in hand and an almost maniacal grin on his face. This was it. He could feel it. This was his moment. This was how his Hollywood story would begin.

It should come as no surprise that Morgan wasn’t nearly as excited about this new way of pitching as Tony was.

What he saw was a wild-eyed, unkempt, crazy person sprinting toward him, and Morgan reacted the way any sane person would.

He pulled a Taser from his robe’s pocket and fired at the crazy person.

ZAP!

Tony staggered into his duplex later that night, looking like he’d been struck by lightning. His hair stood up in a cartoonish frizz, and smoke continued to sift from his clothes.

As Tony passed the old television in his living room, it suddenly flickered on. He stopped and did a double-take. That was weird. He slowly touched the power button, then leaped back from the static shock.

“Great,” he muttered.

Suddenly, a pair of socks leaped from the couch and stuck to his arms like clothes freshly pulled from a dryer. He shook his arms, but they held like glue.

“Oh, come on.”

He peeled them off, only to find them now sticking to his hands. He shook his hands hard, but the socks wouldn’t come loose.

Tony walked over to the couch and plopped down, continuing to pull at the socks only to find them stuck to the hand doing the pulling.

Then, from above him came a fluttering sound.

He looked up to see the rejection letters on the ‘wall of shame’ flapping like a swarm of butterflies.

Suddenly, the letters tore loose and flew onto Tony, clinging to him like a human bulletin board.