The Second Assistant (22 page)

“The guy who lives across the street from me went to USC, and he said that he can do a budget and owns Movie Magic,” I told Jason as we resumed our walk.

“Where does he work? Maybe I know him.”

“He washes cars on the Paramount lot and bartends at Jones at night. His name is Peter.”

“Great.” Jason was nodding in time to his walking. He was also paying attention to what I was saying, which was an experience that I hadn’t had for a while. Funnily enough, though, it made me a bit nervous, because when you’re surrounded by people who don’t listen to a word you say, you begin to wonder if you actually have anything worth sharing with the world. Jason seemed to still be with me, though, so I took a chance and continued.

“But I think that first of all we need to find you representation. We need some financing, even if we’re going to go for a really low budget. And if you have an agent or a manager, we can get it out to some of the smaller production companies. What do you think?”

“I think I’d kill to have representation.” Jason scuffed his feet into the bark as we walked. “I’ve tried before—hundreds of times, in fact—but I’ve always been turned down. So how do we do that?”

“I thought that I could ask some of the junior agents at The Agency,” I said. “Slip them the script and see what they think. And just so we’re clear: You won’t just sell the material; you’re determined to direct as well?” I wanted to clarify the point with Jason, knowing that it was going to be easier for my unexercised butt to pass through one of the cracks in the fence we were walking by than to get any financier in his right mind to agree to let a film-school graduate direct his first movie. Especially given that I and said butt were supposed to produce. Which would just make getting a deal even harder. It necessarily followed that the more people you had attached to a movie before it even began, the
more cumbersome and expensive it was and, ultimately, the more unlikely it was to be made.

“I won’t do it if I can’t direct. And I know what you’re thinking, but likewise I won’t do it if you’re not attached as producer. Okay? I’m loyal to a fault.”

“Great. But you know that you could just give me an associate-producer credit and ditch me at the first post if you like. Just tell me now,” I said, meaning it but secretly hoping that he wouldn’t. After all, I already felt as though I were becoming emotionally involved with this project. Typical woman. One date and I was hooked.

“No way. If you’re in, you’re in. Trust me on that one, Elizabeth.” Jason stopped by a water fountain and offered me the first drink. I bent down and took a sip. Naturally it tasted better than Evian. “So when do you think we can get it to an agent?”

“I think it’s best to choose carefully,” I said, wiping the water from my mouth. “I’ll ask around tomorrow and try to figure something out. But I guess we can get this to someone by the end of the week, no problem.”

“Cool.” Jason bent for his water and I looked down over the Canyon. The sun was higher in the sky, and it was getting hot. I was thinking how nice it would be to head back for some brunch now that we’d had our Sunday-morning hike and I’d survived.

“So I was thinking that we could go over a few notes that I have on the script first,” I said. “Now, if you like.”

“Perfect.” Jason took off his fleece, revealing a seriously sporty T-shirt. “Since I’m warmed up, I’ll be a lot more receptive to ideas. Another five miles and I might actually have something to add.” He turned and slapped me on the back again. This time I merely heard the hollow sound of my stomach reverberating through my body. Five miles more meant five miles back, too. I took off my Gore-Tex and reconciled myself to the fact that my fantasy of giving him notes over an organic smoothie and huevos rancheros at the Newsroom Café was at least ten miles away.

This is the sort of day history tells us is better spent in bed.

—Louis Calhern as Uncle Willie
High Society

R
italin is not just a drug for hyperactive children, apparently. It’s also prescribed for adults who exhibit traits of attention deficit disorder. It helps them to focus. It had certainly been providing Scott with endless hours of fun since his shrink had handed over a monster-size orange vial of the stuff three days ago. Being Scott, though, he had swiftly dispensed with the notion of prescribed dosage. Instead he discovered that while one or two Ritalin did a fine but generally imperceptible job of reigning in his attention, ten or eleven, pulverized between a Yankees paperweight and a piece of clean white paper, then snorted, yielded much more joy and hours more focus.

“Morning, Scott.” I put my head around his door when I arrived at the office on Wednesday morning. “I’m going to the Coffee Bean. Can I get you anything?”

“Triple espresso,” he said without looking up from his computer.

Frankly, I was amazed by his newfound productivity. He was glued to his screen every minute of every day lately. He was getting in before us all and was still here when we left in the evenings. In fact, I was beginning to wonder if he’d been home at all. There was a faint whiff in the room, and his five o’clock shadow was darkening to a distinct shade of beard.

“Scott, are you okay?” I asked. I took a couple of steps into his
office and heard the familiar Texas Hold ’Em shuffle. There was also an array of credit cards scattered across his desk. Presumably to fund his little habit—the poker, that is, not the drugs.

“How’s the game going?” I asked.

“Yeah.” He tapped his index finger on his mouse and blinked his dry, purple-rimmed eyes at the screen. I retreated out the door and back into the assistant pool.

Courtney and Talitha were at their desks nursing hot drinks and leafing through the trades.

“Has anyone spoken to Lara?” I asked. She had been away since last week and was never contactable during the day. She simply left messages in the dead of night saying that she had strep throat and would be away again tomorrow. But I didn’t mind too much, as Scott showed no sign of being pissed about her protracted absence. Plus, since he was doing his Howard Hughes impression and not leaving his four walls, there was barely anything for me to do anyway. Except ward off all comers. Which was actually easy, once you mastered the knack of lying without simultaneously ducking down to avoid the crash of the thunderbolt. I was able to tell a blatant whopper these days without so much as flinching. It made me a far, far more efficient assistant than any secretarial course ever could.

“Ryan saw her last night at Les Deux with some agent from William Morris,” Courtney said, loudly enough to disturb Scott’s poker reverie.

“Where’s my fucking espresso?” he yelled.

“Coming.” I started to leave the office. “Do you think that maybe he needs help?” I lowered my voice and moved toward the other girls. For while I’d never ordinarily ask for so much as the time of day from either of them, Lara wasn’t around and I was concerned that Scott might be suffering some sort of breakdown.

“Oh,
hello
?” Courtney said in such a patronizing way that it made me want to shove pencils up her nostrils.

“I know he should be in Promises, but do you think it’s urgent? Is he going to go into cardiac arrest with all that stuff, or what?” I addressed Talitha instead.

“What’s he doing in there?” Talitha stuck her head out from behind her desk and took a peek into Scott’s office.

“Playing online poker. I think he’s lost a shitload of money,” I said.

“And he hasn’t slept or eaten in three days?” she asked.

“Well, he must have, mustn’t he? I mean, I haven’t ordered him in any food and I haven’t seen him sleeping, but I’m assuming he must. Right? I mean, he’s a man, not a camel.”

“He’s on Ritalin, honey.” Talitha shook her head in a concerned way. “It’s speed. It’s calming, and it creates concentration like all hell. A speed freak can water a plant for three days. You can bet your left tit that Scottie hasn’t moved since Monday morning.”

“Oh, my God, that’s gross!” I said, my nice-girl, middle-class roots showing through about as clearly as my Bumblefuck Mouse roots were at the moment, given that I was too poor to have a touch-up done. “Won’t he get bedsores or something?”

“Well, if he hasn’t blown every red cent he has on poker or died before Friday, then yes, I guess he might get bedsores. But I think they’re the least of his worries right now.”

“Should I call his wife?” I asked, beginning to panic. I looked into Scott’s office once again, to check that he hadn’t face-planted on his keyboard, but he was still fixated on his screen.

“Oh, yes, baby, give me an ace give me an ace! An ace on the flop, please, sweet Jesus!”

“If she hasn’t noticed he’s missing, then I’d just assume she doesn’t care,” Courtney said.

“Then what about his shrink? Should I call his shrink?” I really didn’t think that I could just leave him like this any longer.

“Up to you.” Talitha lost interest as the cute guy from Accounts walked through the office, and she and Courtney turned fluffy and began talking to him.

I went to the Coffee Bean and caught Jason in the middle of a rush.

“Hey, Lizzie, any news?” he asked over the heads of a line of six people. I moved around to the side of his counter where we wouldn’t be heard by half The Agency staffers as they collected their midmorning pickups.

“I’ve approached a few of the junior agents, but none of them have bitten yet. I suspect that they’ll read it this weekend,” I said. I’d actually sent it to six people and was feeling a little disappointed that I hadn’t had a single response yet. It had been over a week now, and as I’d cherry-picked them all and approached them individually, I’d hoped they might have been a little sprightlier off the mark. Still, I knew how long it could take to get around to reading a script, so it didn’t
necessarily mean anything ominous that we hadn’t heard back yet. And it was only going to take one person to like the material and we’d be off the starting block.

“Okay, well we’ll keep our fingers crossed. Did you want drinks?” he asked as he dropped a pile of waxed-paper cups all over the floor.

“I was hoping for a triple espresso and a little something for me. But I’ll wait in line like everyone else. I don’t want to create any bad feelings.” Which I already seemed to be doing by engaging the coffeemaker in conversation, judging by the looks on some of the customers’ faces.

“Might be wise,” Jason said, and I shifted to the back of the line and pondered Scott. My task today would be to keep him out of the ER, I figured, so I picked up three cheese-and-bacon ciabattas and two smoothies. He needed nutrients. “But shall we meet later on at my place to go over the latest draft? I’ll call you to arrange.”

“Sure, sounds perfect,” I said. Jason and I had both agreed after our hike that we would read through the script again and see if there were any changes that would make it punchier, more emotionally hard-hitting, or just generally better. I had my notes ready, and, clearly, so did Jason. And I couldn’t wait to get down and dirty and work on the script. To really feel that I was flexing my producer’s muscles.

I gathered up my emergency supplies and hurried back to the office with renewed enthusiasm. I was on a steep learning curve, and even in my low-grade office chair, I learned more about cutting a deal than I would if I’d gone to Stanford and done an M.B.A. Because one of the great things about Hollywood was that no matter where you worked or what you did for a living, you couldn’t avoid becoming competent in the business of moviemaking. Every coffee shop you sat in, you overheard the terms and the deal brokering; in the nail salon, you were as likely to pick up a copy of the
Hollywood Reporter
as a
People
magazine; and the woman in the dry cleaner’s stunned me one day by filling me in on the back of Michael Bay’s latest studio deal as she separated the skirts from the pants. Learning about the machinations of producing was osmotic, merely a by-product of showing up at work or the hairdresser’s. And the extra hours I put into my new career-to-be by watching old movies and reading about production values and struggling through
Venice
magazine only served to make me feel like a bona fide producer already. Which was just as well, because I was terrible at winging it.

“Scott?” I tiptoed my way into his office with my wares. “Are you doing okay?”

“Hmmmm” was the only response I got from him, so I moved in closer to his desk. Strangely enough, at close quarters, he didn’t look quite as bad as I had feared. A little partied out perhaps, but actually kind of bright-eyed and full of vitality.

“So what goes on with this game?” I asked, attempting to gauge the extent of his cerebral decline. I stood behind him and looked over his shoulder.

“I’m sitting second out of six hundred in a two-hundred-dollar buy-in tournament. I’m about to go all in on this hand,” he said in a reasoned monotone. “Bring it on, mister. I’m gonna whip your ass.”

I placed the triple espresso next to Scott, and some internal radar must have told him it was there, because he reached out without looking and downed it in one gulp.

“Oh, yes, baby! Oh, yes! I’ve tripped fuckin’ aces on the fuckin’ flop!”

I examined the carnage on his desk, the metallic glint of at least a dozen credit cards (thankfully, the black ones hadn’t been ransacked yet), an empty bottle of Jack Daniel’s and a half-empty container of Ritalin.

“Are you
supposed
to crush those things?” I asked quietly.

“Holy fuckola!” Scott suddenly leaped up in his chair and high-fived me. Well, he tried to, but I wasn’t fast enough, and he just slapped my biceps instead. “Who’s your daddy? Who’s your daddy?” He crashed back into his seat and spun around a few times. “I just won a thirty-six-thousand-dollar tournament!” he said. “Now, what did you want, Lizzie?”

“I wondered if you were meant to crush your pills up and snort them,” I said.

“Oh, right. Well, yeah, actually you are. Thing is that pills that are fun to snort are easy to crush. Pharmacists make it this way to turn us into addicts, so who the fuck am I to argue?” Scott laid his finger on his mouse and exerted the merest pressure. A second later the cards fell—click-click-click on the electronic baize.

“Really?” I said, wondering if I ought to call Daniel or maybe even Katherine Watson, somebody who might be able to enlighten me as to whether this was reasonable behavior. For an addict. I guess at least he’d just won something, so Mia would be happy.

“Oh, yeah. Zoloft and Paxil and lithium are all coated and can’t be cut up, but they’d be no kick to sniff anyway. Vicodin and Percocet, on the other hand, are easy to crush and—surprise, surprise—habit-forming. See? It’s a conspiracy. I’m just going along with it.”

“Scott, will you do me a favor and eat one of these sandwiches I’ve brought you?”

“Sure thing, baby. Just leave it there, and I’ll get to it.”

“I’ll come back and check on you in ten,” I said. But he didn’t hear me because he was making a loud protest about his latest opponent.

“Oh, hey, you sucker from Oslo! You seal-eating, fjord-fucking fuck! You have no business being at this table.” He kicked his chair away from his desk in frustration, and I dodged out of the way. Then out of his office. He was still very much alive and seemed to be enjoying himself, so I decided to check out and write an overdue e-mail to my sister.

It was Saturday, and, along with every other person in Los Angeles, I had decided to indulge in a little conspicuous consumption. Alexa had knocked on my door with an organic watermelon juice for me just after her 7:00
A
.
M
. student left, and she asked whether I wanted to go to the Beverly Center with her. She had to buy some Australian Bush Essences and also wanted to drop by Old Navy because she’d heard they had some fantastic yoga pants on sale.

“That’s a great idea,” I agreed as I swept the sleep from my eyes and tried to hide the worst of the holes in my brushed-cotton floral pajamas by sitting down. “I really need to get something to wear to this Halloween party tonight. Though I have no idea what I’m going as, and I can barely afford a Spider-Man mask. Do L.A. people actually get dressed up for these things?”

“Oh, sure, they go all out. You live in a town full of unemployed actors, you’re going to see so many people dressed as train-wreck victims that you’ll never get on board a train again,” Alexa informed me. “I usually go to a pumpkin festival, but I have a retreat tomorrow, so I’m sitting Halloween out this year.”

“Shall I drive us?” I offered, obviously not getting many costume tips there.

“Sure,” she said as she struck a few impossible poses that I took to be yoga.

“It’s nice to have a friend in the building,” I said, trying not to sound like Jennifer Jason Leigh in
Single White Female
. “Just to hang out with and do normal stuff.” Ha, ha. Like break into your apartment and wear your clothes and steal your boyfriend.

“It sure is.” Alexa ran her finger around the rim of her glass and licked off the remains of her pink juice. “I need to stop by Polka Dots and Moonbeams. They’ve got great vintage—maybe you could go as a fifties housewife?” She smiled and did a few lunges in the direction of the door.