The Road to Amazing (5 page)

"You look so different," Gunnar
said.

"Fantastic," Min said.
"You look
fantastic
."

The weird part was, Otto
looked different even since I'd last seen him. Was it the fact that
he was famous now, that I'd watched him on TV? Honestly, it seemed
like more than that. And it wasn't just the obviously expensive
clothes and the new, incredibly flattering haircut. He had a
confidence he'd never had before. He and I used to joke that the
secret to success in Hollywood was to simply
act
successful, but now I saw that
actual success looked different than fake success. It wasn't as
eager-to-please. Anyway, it flattered him too.

"God, how long has it been?" Otto said
to Min and Gunnar. "Ten years? We were all such kids."

As they talked, I introduced Vernie to
Nate and Ruby, who were back from the beach.

At one point, I overheard Gunnar
saying to Otto, "It's so great, you're being famous and
everything."

Otto shook his head and even blushed a
little, perfectly endearing. "I'm not famous," he said.

"You
so
are!" I called. "And you
totally,
totally
deserve it."

At that point, he just smiled
modestly, but right after that, he peeled off from the others to go
wash his hands before dinner.

* * *

A few minutes later, we gathered
everyone at the dinner table. Kevin and I stood together at one
end.

"We'd like to say a couple of things,"
Kevin said. "First, just so you know, we've installed hidden
cameras throughout the house, including the bathrooms. So if any of
you do anything questionable, the two of us will definitely
know."

People laughed, but Gunnar said,
"Really?" and when I told him no, he actually looked kind of
disappointed.

"No, seriously," Kevin said, "Russel
and I really want to thank you all for coming. It means a lot to
us. But we also wanted to explain why we hadn't asked any of you to
be our best man. Or best woman."

"Best person," Min said, and I pointed
at her.

"Why?" Nate said,
mock-indignant.

"Because we hate you all," Kevin
said.

Nate snorted, and everyone else
laughed again. Kevin was killing this little speech of his, which
made me happy for a lot of reasons, but especially because it meant
he'd finally relaxed about the weekend.

"Actually," I said, "it's
because we didn't want to have to choose. The way we see it,
you're
all
our
best persons." My eyes found Ruby and Nate. "Well, except for you
guys, because I only just met you. But I'm sure if I
knew
you, I would
absolutely want you as a 'best person' too."

Yes, this was mostly me being
diplomatic (I couldn't imagine ever liking Nate that
much).

Ruby hoisted her drink. "I'm right
there with ya!" she said.

Kevin took my hand, and we faced the
gathering again. "Anyway," he said, "that's what we wanted to say.
That we love you all, and we're really happy you could be here with
us."

Everyone hooted and applauded, and
told us they loved us too, and how happy they were to be there.
After that, we ate and talked, but I couldn't help thinking about
what Kevin had said. The stuff about not wanting to pick a "best
person"? It was the actual truth, something he and I had decided
beforehand.

But as I looked around the table, I
wondered: If someone put a gun to my head, who would I pick — not
only as my best person, but as my best friend? The whole idea of a
best friend was really kind of stupid — something from grade
school, like wanting to be an astronaut when you grew up. But I
still wondered who it would be. Min? She was definitely the person
I confided in the most, even now that I lived in Los Angeles, and I
think she probably understood me better than anyone. But Gunnar was
the kind of guy you could count on for absolutely anything, no
questions asked, and Min and I joked a lot about how he understood
more than he sometimes let on. Otto and I had once been boyfriends,
which gave you a special kind of intimacy (you'll note that he was
the only person I hugged at the front door). Now that we lived in
the same city, he and I had ended up becoming really close — at
least before his career had taken off. And there was Vernie, the
person who had helped me find meaning in my life by getting me to
realize I wanted to be a screenwriter, and who was now the world's
greatest mentor.

Then there was Kevin, the
guy I was marrying. The instant I thought of it, I realized
that
he
was my
best friend, no matter how you sliced it.

The best man is also the
groom
, I thought. Who knew?

All of which made me realize (again)
what a lucky guy I was, and that I'd pretty much have to have blue
broccoli for brains to complain about anything in my
life.

* * *

After dinner, we all cleaned up, and
Vernie helped me load the dishwater.

"So what's new in Hollywood?" she
asked me.

"Well,
A Cup of Joe
is officially dead," I
said.
A Cup of Joe
was an indie movie project I'd written that some friends and
I had been trying to set up in Los Angeles. We'd come really close
to getting financing a couple of times, but it had always fallen
through. In the end, everyone had given up and moved on to other
projects.

"Just dead or truly dead?"

Everyone in Hollywood knows that
nothing is ever really dead — that there's always one more place to
try, one more hustle to play, or maybe an unexpected change in the
marketplace. But it's somehow also true that sometimes a project
finally seems truly dead, and you have to learn to let it
go.

"Truly dead, I think," I
said.

"Well, I'm really sorry to
hear that. It was a damn good script. But they're all spins at the
roulette wheel. You know that, right? There's a
huge
element of luck in all this,
just flat-out random chance. That's why you can't get bogged down
with any one project. You need to have at least five scripts always
ready to go. Do you have five scripts ready to go?"

"Ma'am, yes,
ma'am
!" I said, saluting
like a soldier.

Vernie laughed.

"I've decided I need a new strategy,"
I said.

"I'm intrigued. Go on."

"Well, with
A Cup of Joe
, it all
boiled down to money. Everyone wants to make a feature film, but no
one has any money. So I've decided to write a single-location
script. Something completely bare-bones that can be produced for a
hundred thousand dollars or less."

Single-location scripts were suddenly
all the rage among aspiring screenwriters in Hollywood. The idea
was that the whole story is set in a single location (or two), so
the movie can be filmed fast and inexpensively.

Vernie thought about it, then nodded.
"I guess that makes sense."

"You know," I said,
"movies like
Buried
, or
Devil
,
or
Moon
,
or
Wrecked
,
or
ATM
,
or
Locke
? All those writers got lots of
attention for good scripts that could be filmed really
cheap."

"
Twelve Angry Men
," Vernie
said.

"Yeah!"

"What are they about?"

"Well," I said,
"
Buried
is about
someone trapped in a coffin.
Moon
is about someone trapped in a moon
station,
Devil
is
about people trapped in an elevator,
Wrecked
is about someone trapped in
the wreckage of a car,
ATM
is—"

"Okay, okay, I get the idea. Do they
have to have one-word titles?"

"No, that's just a
coincidence."

"There's just one problem," Vernie
said.

"What's that?"

"Movies are an inherently visual
medium. And also a medium that depends on movement."

"What's your point? That no one wants
to see a movie set in a single location?"

"You said it."

"But the writers are using
their self-imposed limitations to explore a particular theme," I
said. "These are movies that are literally
about
being trapped, so the setting
reinforces the theme. Besides, the critics love 'em."

"Oh, the
critics
." She made a
motion like she was jacking off, and I laughed.

"Well," I said, "in addition to having
one-word titles and being about people who are trapped, you know
what else those movies all have in common?"

"What's that?"

"They actually got
made
. Unlike, oh, I
don't know, the twelve screenplays
I've
written?"

Vernie smiled. "Good point. But do me
a favor?"

"Sure."

"Never forget the whole point of
movies."

"What's that?" I asked.

"Movie moments."

I stared at her.

"You know, movie moments?"
she went on. "Those moments in every good movie where everything
comes perfectly together — the writing, the acting, the visuals —
with some great emotional punch? Like when Brody sees the shark for
the first time in
Jaws
and says, 'You're gonna need a bigger boat.' Or in
Spartacus
when Kirk
Douglas stands up and says, 'I am Spartacus!' And then the rest of
the crowd stands up too, one by one, all saying that they're
Spartacus too."

"The cockroach scene
in
Snowpiercer
,"
I said.

"I don't know what that
is," Vernie said, "but I'm sure you're right. A movie moment is any
moment in a movie where it all comes together — it's larger than
life, but also somehow perfectly
about
life. They're actually the
reason we go to the movies in the first place, because they
perfectly capture some emotion that we've all felt, and clarify
exactly what the movie is trying to say."

I kept staring at her, but now I
looked annoyed.

"Now what?" she said.

"You've been my mentor for
how long now? Two years? And you're only telling me about movie
moments
now
?"

"Well, it's kind of implied in
everything I told you before."

"Yes, but I didn't know
there was an actual technical
term
."

"A term I basically just made
up."

"That's completely beside the point!"
I said. I kept scowling, determined to make her squirm. Alas,
Vernie rarely squirms.

"Let's move on," she said. "What ideas
do you have so far for a single-location script?"

Reluctantly, I withdrew my
scowl.

"Well," I said, "my first
idea was a script called
Couch
Potatoes
. It's about four guys who are
roommates."

"Why are they all guys?" Vernie
asked.

"Good point. Okay, three guys and a
girl."

"That's almost worse. The whole
Smurfette Principle."

I smiled, impressed that
Vernie knew about the Smurfette Principle (which is the story trope
where there is only one major female character, usually a
completely stereotypical one, among a large cast of diverse males,
like in
The Fantastic
Four
,
Guardians
of the Galaxy
,
The Avengers
,
The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
,
Now You See Me
,
Harry Potter
,
Fast &
Furious
,
Winnie
the Pooh
,
The
Smurfs
, and, oh, a zillion other
things).

"Okay, it's four
guys
," I said, and
Vernie nodded. "And they're jerky to the woman who lives next door.
But she turns out to be a gypsy, and she curses them so they can't
get up off the couch until they somehow solve the gypsy's
curse."

She stared at me without saying a
word.

"It's not
that
bad," I said. "Is
it?"

"Apart from the
romaphobia?"

Nate interrupted us, so I didn't get a
chance to ask what romaphobia was.

"Screw the gas fire pit — Ruby and I
built a bonfire down on the beach," he said. "You guys wanna join
us?"