For the Love of Money (25 page)

“If you came out here trying to poke your way into this little black stuff,
you're gonna end up having a tedious, half-lit career,” she told me. “That little black stuff doesn't last, girl. It's all trendy and cute, but you'll be hanging out with the same crowd of people and basically going nowhere.

“What
you
want to do is latch onto something that's going to
be
here,” she told me. “As we get closer to the year 2000 and beyond, science fiction is where you want to be.
Mark my words.
”

She paused and gave me a minute to think about it. “Well, you make up your own mind, but if you want to go, make sure you let me know before Saturday,” she said.

When we hung up, I sat and thought about science fiction. George Lucas was moving forward with his next series of
Star Wars
movies and re-releasing the old ones.
E.T.
was the biggest hit of the eighties.
Terminator
was Arnold Schwarzenegger's breakout movie which led to
Terminator 2.
The
Batman
movies were big hits in the nineties, just as the
Superman
movies were big hits in the eighties.
Jurassic Park
led to the production of
The Lost World.
Danny Glover played the hero in
Predator 2.
Angela Bassett costarred in
Strange Days,
and Will Smith had just hit pay dirt with
Independence Day.
Not to mention all of the hype about the television series called
The X-Files.

That was all the thinking I needed to do. I had to at least see what the opportunities would be in science fiction, whether I was interested in it or not. So I nodded my head and said out loud to myself, “Let me go pick out an outfit.”

$   $   $

Yolanda picked me up Saturday night around nine-thirty in her silver Jaguar.

She looked at my townhouse from the outside and said, “It looks nice. You're gonna need some rent money, aren't you?”

I smiled as I climbed onto her leather interior.

“I don't plan to be without a job for too long,” I told her.

She said, “Good. That's the right attitude to have.”

Yolanda was dressed in a black business suit, as sexy as a model, but was strong as a male executive in her demeanor.

“That's a nice suit you're wearing too,” she told me.

I was wearing deep blue with tiny gray pinstripes.

I smiled and said, “Thank you.”

She said, “When you
want
business, you
dress
business. When you want
to schmooze, you dress the part you want to play, but tonight is business for
both
of us, so we look good.”

I wondered again how old Yolanda was.

“How long have you been in the business?” I asked her. It was a roundabout way of finding out how old she was without asking.

“About eight, nine years now,” she answered. “I actually started off in the music business, but I like film and television a lot better. Let's just say that it's more accessible to me. The music business tends to have too many damn hands in the way.”

“So, you're about thirty-six then?” I assumed.

Yolanda chuckled without looking at me. We were on our way north to West Hollywood.

“Tracy, if you want to know how old I am, just ask me.”

I smiled and was still hesitant. “How old are you?” I asked her.

“None of your business,” Yolanda answered and started laughing. “I'm thirty-four,” she told me, “and that's between me and you. I like to use my age to my advantage. If they think young, I let them know that I'm older than what I look. And if they think old ... then I'll get offended,” she added with another laugh. “I keep 'em all off guard that way.”

“What about the men out here?” I asked her. It was a roundabout way of asking if she was happily with someone, because every once in a while I got lonely out there in Cali.

Yolanda looked at me and said, “Okay, let me tell you the rules of Hollywood. Number one: You never fuck anyone without protection.
Double
protection if you can, because as you can imagine, these Hollywood types can get around. Number two: If it's business, then make sure they
know
it's business. That means you have to know if your friend is connected the way you need them to be, and that they will
still
help you to get there whether you continue to sleep with them or not. That's important, because if they're going to screw you over and not help you, then you can't sleep with them. Period! Number three: Keep your personal business to yourself. Some people think that Hollywood types like to brag about their partners to make the news, but trust me, there's a lot more fucking going on out here than that couple shit you see on TV and read about in these gossip magazines. So don't believe the hype, and keep it to yourself.”

I said, “What about just regular relationships that are not business related?”

Yolanda looked at me and shrugged her shoulders. “You do whatever you want, just keep it to yourself.”

I guess that romance wasn't too high on her list of importance, so I made a note to keep
my
mind on more business-related aspects as well. Like Yolanda said, I had
rent
to take care of, and with my
own
money instead of counting on the generosity of some man.

We arrived in the lobby of a ritzy Hollywood hotel where the dress code varied from jeans and sneakers to suits and ties. However, the style of dress did not determine who really had the money and the power in that place. Some of those science fiction people just didn't like to wear suits, or groom for business purposes. As expected with science fiction, there were not a lot of colored faces in the room either. Maybe Yolanda was really onto something, fresh opportunities.

There was a soft piano playing in the background and plenty of private conversations going on. Everyone looked fully into themselves. I was wondering how you even broke in for a word.Yolanda showed me that skill right away.

“Calvin! Good to see you,” she said.

A silver-haired white man in his fifties turned and faced us with a smile.

“Yolanda,” he responded, taking her hand. His previous conversation seemed to fade away into thin air. I guess it wasn't that important to him.

“Has the buzz been good so far?” she asked him about the upcoming film.

“So far, but we'll see when the time comes.”

He looked to me, and Yolanda introduced me on cue.

“This is Tracy ...Ellison.”

I was hardly on first-name terms. Yolanda seemed to forget that herself for a second.

“Nice to meet you,” he said, nodding to me.

“Hi,” I responded and nodded back with a grin.

“She's an upcoming writer, hot out of UCLA.
And
she moves
fast,
” Yolanda filled him in.

He said, “Fast is the only way to move. So you're into science fiction?” he asked me.

Before I answered him, I took in his casual dress code of a dark sports jacket, dress shirt, and no tie. He had the relaxed confidence of big business and not the nervous energy of small business, so I decided that I had better not say no, especially since he was the first person that Yolanda spoke to. I figured that meant something.

“I like to stay abreast of opportunities in
all
fields,” I told him. “Besides, growing up as a black girl in the inner city, whenever I saw space movies and no people of color in them, I always wondered if we would even
make it
to the future.”

Yolanda and Calvin laughed big-time at that one. It was a good opening line. I could tell right off the bat that Yolanda was proud of me by the way she pulled me into her.

“Tracy's out here to make sure that we add some color to the future,” she joked.

“Do you have any ideas developed yet?” Calvin asked.

Shit!
I was thinking.
They're not lying about how fast Hollywood moves.
I thought fast myself and answered, “Well, I'm looking to knock a few ideas around to see if mine are on point or if I need to redirect them.”

Calvin raised his head a touch and smiled at me. Did he know that I was bullshitting? He didn't seem to care. Maybe he just liked my answers.

Yolanda said, “You know how some of these writers are. They're protective of their work right up until they get it green-lighted for production.”

“Well, make sure that you stay in touch with me, Tracy. I might want to take a look at what you have. Yolanda has my number.”

We moved on, and Yolanda nudged me in my ribs with her elbow.

“That's how you do it, girl! You don't tell these people you're not interested in science fiction. And you always use whatever angle you can to keep them interested.”

We approached a group of white women, some old, some young, and all dressed differently, from dresses, to suits, to jeans.

“Yolanda,” one of the older women turned and addressed my new mentor.

Yolanda said, “Ladies, this is Tracy Ellison, script doctor extraordinaire, just out from the East Coast.”

“Well, we need
more,
” one of the other women commented. “These scripts are
horrible
!”

Yolanda was pumping me up, but I didn't feel as confident in a group of women. Women were a lot more sensitive to conversations than men were. I knew I had to be very careful and let Yolanda take the lead.

“I'll be gentle,” I told them.

“No-o-o! You
can't
be gentle. They're
used
to gentle,” someone said. “You need to take a sharpened
ax
to their work.”

“Then she'll be writing a book about how she was run
out
of Hollywood,” Yolanda joked.

It was too much for me to focus on any one of them, so I just rolled with the flow.

“That's why I plan to be gentle,” I reiterated with a smile. “You're in charge, and you're the creator. I'm only here to make you look
better.
However, if you don't want my help . . .”

The women laughed at my role-playing and added lines of their own.

“I don't need your help, woman! I'm out of grade school now. Go find yourself some other schoolboy to try and educate. I do things
my
way around here!”

“I should just ignore all of the misspelled words then?” I continued with them.

Yolanda decided to jump into the fun. “On second thought, correct the misspelled words before you leave,” she concluded.

We all laughed again like civil women, fully understanding that the business of Hollywood, like many others, was a man's playground that could use a woman's touch.

“So what school did you go to?” the first older woman asked me.

I answered proudly, “Hampton in Virginia. It was one of the first Historically Black Colleges and Universities in the country, established after the Civil War.” Hampton was much older than many white institutions, particularly those established on the West Coast.

“What part of Virginia?” I was asked.

“Hampton, Virginia,” Yolanda answered for me. I'm sure she was as proud of HBCUs as I was, even with the rivalries between Hampton and Howard. We were all family like Sister Sledge.

“Are you from the Los Angeles area?”

“Philadelphia,” I answered.

Women often asked a lot more questions too. Did any of it get around to business? Maybe next week sometime. That's why I preferred to talk to men. Men showed you two interests, business and sex, and not necessarily in that order, but at least that gave me a much easier focal point when talking to them. Women, on the other hand, could get really competitive, personal, and petty, so I couldn't wait to get the hell away from them.

Yolanda said, “Girl, you are
workin' it
! You hear me?! If you keep this up, you should have
no problem
in Hollywood.”

Shit, I was tired already! Yolanda had no idea how hard I was working to make sure I said the right things. That was a lot of pressure. What ever happened to just being yourself?

Yolanda looked clear across the room and snapped her fingers like a woman possessed.

“Perfect!” she told herself and looked at me. “Have you ever watched the show
The Outer Limits
on Showtime?” she asked me.

I nodded. “Yeah.” I was only familiar with
The Outer Limits
because my brother Jason watched the show religiously. They even had marathons on Showtime where they would air two and three of them in a row.

Yolanda said, “Good. I want you to meet Tim Waterman. He's the producer of a knock-off cable show called
Conditions of Mentality.
It's in the same vein as
The Outer Limits
and other psychological, science fiction shows.”

Oh, goody!
I thought to myself with a sly grin.
Now I get to talk to a guy who produces a B- or C-grade science fiction show for cable.

Nevertheless, Yolanda was pumped about it.

She said, “Tim, are you still looking for new writers to fill out your show?”

Tim was a tall, blond guy with silver, wire-framed glasses. He let his hair grow long to his shoulders. He looked more like a romance show producer than science fiction, but what did
I
know?

“We're just about booked up now. The new season's in full swing and we're rocking and rolling, baby!”

On second thought, he sure
spoke
like a science fiction guy. He was all energy. Two sexy young women were standing by him, creating eye candy for Tim's sexual allure, or maybe I was reading too much into things. They could have been his sister and her girlfriend . . .
Not hardly!

Yolanda said, “Well, what about assistant writers?”

He grimaced. I don't think he was up for talking business with his candy in the way.