“You know what kid?” Sid asked, “you really are a fuck up.”
It dawned on me quickly, that he wasn’t asking a question.
“How so, Sid?” I said back.
“Just look at you, man, you don’t even tuck your shirts in.”
He had me there. I never tucked my shirt in. I hated it. I
did not understand guys that tucked in their shirts. Don’t even get me started
on t-shirts. Why the hell would you tuck in a t-shirt?
“You got me there, Sid. It just seems so, so. What’s the
word I’m looking for?”
“Professional? Well-groomed? Respectful?”
“Nah.”
“Corporate?”
“Definitely is that, but not what I’m searching for.”
I racked my brain, looking for a word that fit. This is one
of those times when I wished I had a better vocabulary. It usually hit when I was
writing. You can only use pretty or beautiful so many times. And adorable, it’s
just too cute.
“Shitty,” I finally settled on.
“And you’re a fucking writer?”
“Yeah, kind of explains the whole ‘unpublished’ part, doesn’t
it?”
He laughed is hearty belly laugh. It was one of the best parts
of the day when I could get Sid to laugh like that. He hadn’t been nearly as
happy lately. I’d noticed. It started before I told him I wanted to work at the
taco stand. At least a month before, I’m not completely sure because I was off
in my car for three weeks prior to June. Decided to finally drive the entire
Highway 61 – from Canada to New Orleans. I submitted an essay on the journey to
a couple of travel mags. They all rejected it. One called it “obvious” while
the other said. “good idea, bad execution. Write about the God damn road, not
what you think about it.”
I didn’t want to listen. Too long I’d listened to what
others said to write. And I never got anywhere. The moment I decided to stop
was at a pitch meeting. Me and my buddy Mitchell were in Los Angeles. He and I had
been doing a web screenplay a day for six months. The last month it got noticed
and exploded. All of our screenplays were 16 minutes long. No more, no less. It
was easier that way, for sure. It made a great idea easier to execute. You didn’t
have do too much plot.
So, one day an agent called us up.
“We want you boys to come out to L.A. and pitch us a script.
If we like it, we’ll make a movie.”
So, we sat up for six days in a row. I was writing like a
mad man, he was riffing ideas like a lunatic. Lots of coffee was consumed by
Mitchell, lots of throwback Mountain Dews on my side.
In the end, we couldn’t come up with anything good.
“Hey, what about the midget idea?” I said as we were taking
a limo to the airport in Wilmington, N.C.
“What?” Mitchell said, still a bit hazy from lack of sleep.
He also had a wife and kid at home, so his desire to sleep was trumping mine at
the moment. Didn’t help that we hit the Front Street Brewery three hours ago to
have a few pints. A few turned into seven for me, six for him. Whoops.
“You know, that midgets breaking out of prison idea we had
in the office one day a while back. One of the better tear producing days, if I
remember.”
“Yeah, but,” Mitchell said.
“But what?”
“How the hell are we going to write a script on it? We’re
heading to the airport.”
“They never said anything about a script. Just to pitch an
idea. That’s what we’re supposed to be. Idea men. There is no way they expect a
full script. Hell, all we’ve shown them is 16-minute scripts. It’s all we know.
We’ll give ‘em ideas, and they’ll pay someone else to flesh it out.”
“Ok,” Mitchell said as we pulled into the airport.
We got to the studio about 11 hours later. Dead on arrival. Me,
I kept drinking on the flight. Wasn’t going to let all that free first-class
booze go to waste. Mitchell, he slept. Sort of.
“Hello, boys,” the studio guy who picked us up said. “You
ready to go straight to the meeting?”
“Huh?” I said. “Straight there?”
“Well, you are a day late.”
Oops. We must have skipped a day in our script writing daze.
I looked at my phone. Sure enough, it was Wednesday. Not Tuesday.
“Sure,” I said. “We’re as ready as we’ll ever be.”
An hour in traffic later, we got to the lot. After a short
golf cart ride, we arrived at a non-descript little building.
A sign on the front said “No writers allowed.” It was
underlined.
“Ignore that fellas,” our guy said. “It’s an inside joke.”
“Damn funny one, too,” Mitchell said looking at me with the
international hand gesture for jerking off going on down below.
We walked in the doors and a secretary was sitting at a
small desk. It was glass, and showed off her legs. She had amazing legs.
Probably the best legs I’d seen in years.
“Finally here, huh Walt?” she said to our guy.
“Yeah, little bit of traffic out today.”
“In L.A.? Go figure,” she said mockingly.
“All right boys, it’s showtime,” Walt said to us, opening
the doors.
Inside were three men. All in suits more expensive than my
car.
Everyone shook hands and introduced themselves. I didn’t pay
any attention to names. I never do. It’s the second introduction that matters
to me. It means I give enough of a shit to ask again.
“Well,” one executive said. I figured he must be the leader
as the other two just let him jump in front. “What do you boys have for us?”
I swallowed hard, took a deep breath, looked at Mitchell. He
waved me on. It was clearly my show now.
“Well, it all starts with long shot of an aging office. It’s
dark. You see the back of someone’s head. The hair is slicked back with some
kind of product. The person is talking on the phone.
He speaks… “Well, I think we’ve got it all under control,
Mr. Govna.” He says.
We pan to a window in front of him. Fire is raging. It
appears to be a prison. Flames are billowing out of the windows. But something
about the prison isn’t normal. Isn’t quite right.
We pan away and back to the hair with voice. It’s Matthew McConaughey. He is naked, expect for white, striped boxer shorts.
I look at the executives, they seem a bit interested now. I knew McConaughey was the right choice. Much better than Nic Cage. But that was a no-brainer.
"A small hand is
rubbing oil on his chest," I continue.
We pull back, it’s a red-headed dwarf. She’s done up like a
cheerleader.
“And sir,” McConaughey says. “They’re little people. What can they
do?”
Cue music. Randy Newman’s “Short People.”
Montage of midgets in prison garb. Going about normal every
day prison activities. In the mess hall. Playing basketball. Lifting weights. Marching
in unison. And raping each other in the shower.
Then, cut to the leader of the midgets as the opening
credits end.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” he says to his buddy, an
Italian midget.
“How boss?” he asks.
The two are looking up at a wall. We pull back. The wall, it’s
just eight feet tall.
I look around the room. Stunned silence.
Finally, executive No. 2 says “What do you call it?”
“Midget Prison : The Escape,” I say proudly. I look at
Mitchell. He’s crying. He’s doing a great job of not laughing, but the tears
tell the tale.
I look at the other two execs, including the “leader.”
“Get the fuck out of here,” he finally says.
“Walt, what the fuck is wrong with you. This? This is what you brought us?”
That was a long day. We were on a flight back in three hours
time.
No deal. No meal. No nothing. The flight back was coach as
well. So no free booze.
“Hey,” Sid yelled to me. “What the fuck are you doing?”
I snapped out of my daydream. The taco shells were burning.
I knew Sid would be mad.
“That’ll cost you two hours’ pay!” he yelled.
So much for the belly laughs.
I started thinking of the secretary’s legs. It put me back
in a good place. Now, if only the dwarf hadn’t been a redhead. That always
scares movie executives away. At least that’s what some hack at the local
community college told me in his ‘Screenwriting 101’ class. He never explained
why.
I got back to making taco shells. We were opening in an
hour. And you had to have shells to have tacos.
