by L. L Hunter
“Oh, my God!”
“What’s that? Someone loves you today.”
“It seems everyone loves me every day. One sec.” I answered it, trying not so successfully to clear my throat. I ended my answering the phone with a hoarse voice.
“Hello? This is Chloe Dean.”
“Hi, Chloe, this is Maggie Abbott from Lifestyle Magazine. How are you today?”
“I’m good. How…” I coughed and spluttered over a bit more wine as it got stuck in my throat.
“Are you okay, Chloe?”
“Yes. Yes. I’m sorry. I’m just kinda choking on my drinks. How can I help you?”
“I just saw your pictures on social media of Kate and Damian’s upcoming nuptials you’re planning and was wondering if you’d be interested in a feature with us.”
“Like an interview? Or a guest article?”
“An interview. We’ll buy the rights to the photos, of course. And we need to ask Kate and Damian to come in and do a shoot with us. How does next week sound?”
I looked to Kate, wide-eyed and panicked. She mouthed, “What?”
“Um, can I get back to you? I have to talk to my agent. Have a good day.” I quickly hung up after getting her information to return her call. I then threw back my head and sighed loudly. I then grabbed my drink, downed the rest of it, and waved at the waiter for another.
Kate just watched on like a deer in headlights, or rather, a teenager waiting to talk to their parents in the middle of fight.
“Um, does that happen a lot?”
“Yes. All the damn time. I’m sick of it.”
“You don’t have to do it.”
“I’ll do it. I don’t know when. But I’ll do it. It’ll be good for you.”
“No, I mean, this wedding. You don’t have to help me if this is getting out of hand. I know you’d much rather be writing.”
“No. It’s okay. I wanna help you. I love taking photos and writing about it. I need to for my book anyway. It’s just all this extra stuff that goes with it. The publicity, the press, the offers… It can get quite overwhelming. I told Jack I wasn’t a good celebrity, but he wants me, regardless.”
“I know. I’m sorry. But it’s what we do. We’re in the spotlight and that’s the price we pay for fame.”
“I know.” I took another sip of wine. “You know, I often wish that when I’m feeling stressed about it all, that I’d stayed in Australia. In my little country house in the middle of nowhere with my books and a million cats.”
“Oh, honey,” said Kate, sympathetically placing her hand on mine across the table. “It’s gonna be okay. I’m here for you. You’ve got this. You’ve got Jack and your perfect little family. I love your gorgeous kids. I want a family one day.”
I smile. Kate always finds the light at the end of the tunnel and fills my empty cup.
“Thanks, Kate. and you will. I know it. But first, we have to get you and your man hitched!”
“Yes.” We laughed and clinked our glasses together. We toasted to friendship, career, dreams, and of course, love.
The End
Boy Behind the Camera
Damian’s Story
Prologue
Life is not black and white.
It’s vivid.
It’s colourful.
It’s beautiful.
It’s romantic.
That was at least how I saw life after I found love.
I didn’t always think like that.
I grew up a cynical boy from a single-parent household. I worked my ass off to get to where I am today.
My goal was always to become a screenwriter and director, and one day, own a film studio.
But the day Kate walked into my life, everything unravelled in the most delicious way.
Kate changed everything.
I never thought I’d be so happy to have my face splashed across glossy magazines. I never thought I’d be so happy to have my dreams taken away from me.
I didn’t care.
But that’s the funny thing about fate.
You leave it up to the stars.
My name is Damian Belle, and this my story.
1
Seven years earlier…
I’m sorry, Damian. It’s just not what we’re looking for at the moment.”
Those rejections were starting to sound like a broken record. I might as well hit record and play them back on a loop.
The rejections.
They came in many forms. Email. Phone calls. Even snail mail.
That’s what you have to get used to it in this industry. It comes with the territory. My idols and my college professor have all said that if you don’t have enough rejections to wallpaper your toilet with, then you’re doing something wrong.
My forehead hit the small wooden desk in my tiny L.A. apartment with an audible thud.
I had been out of college for three years now and still hadn’t made it in Hollywood.
I knew it would be hard, but I’d had stars in my eyes when I first moved here—stars and dreams.
And yet, nothing had happened.
I was beginning to rethink everything. Every single dream I’d ever had as a little boy watching movies and dreaming that one day I’d be the one making them, writing them, producing them, directing them. I just wanted to make movies, dammit!
Why was it so hard?
I knew it wasn’t my script. I’d seen so much shit that had somehow made its way onto the big screen lately. It made me think, who were they sleeping with? What did they do? What was I doing wrong? What wasn’t I doing? Should I be sleeping with someone to get to where I want to be?
I didn’t want to be like that, though—another desperate statistic.
I wanted to make my way to the top with dignity. I wanted to make movies for the love of it, not for the money. I could see that was how Hollywood was heading though, even back then. It was like I had a premonition, a prediction.
I only hoped I wasn’t correct.
As soon as I hung up on what was my twentieth rejection this year, I picked up the phone and called the next studio on my list. Someone was bound to like my script.
Somewhere.
Sometime.
I crossed every digit and dialled.
2
My first big break didn’t come from cold calling a list of contacts in a diary. My first big break happened by chance.
Shortly after finishing my film making degree at college, I got a job as a runner on one of the Hollywood studio backlots. My professor went to college with an Oscar-winning director, so he told me to give his office a call.
I had been working on the studio lot for about three years at this point, moving amongst different sets, for different productions. A runner was about the lowest position on the film set. It was the first rung on the ladder if you wanted to work in that world.
One day, after a particularly stressful morning of nothing going right, the director of the film called me to his office. Well, one of his assistants did, anyway.
I thought this was it. The director had lost it. I had done something wrong, and I was being fired.
I strolled up to the office door in my scuffed sneakers and hole-filled clothes, my well-worn Lakers cap in my hands. I bent the rim back and forth, scrunched the soft fabric in my hands, then placed it back on my head and then removed it again. Rinse and repeat. It was a nervous thing I did—a habit. I raised my fist to knock on the blue door of the director’s office, and it opened before my knuckles had a chance to hit the wood.
“Oh, hi. Can I help you?” said one of the assistants, a pretty young woman.
“Yes, hi. Um, I’m Damian,” I began, taking off my hat and smoothing out my hair. “I’m here to see Mr Goldenberg. He, um… asked me to come to his office?”
“Sure,” she replied in a nonplussed, monotoned voice. Geez. It was like someone had spat in her coffee or something. “And you are?”
Was she serious? “Um, I’m Damian. I…”
“I mean your job. What do you do?”
“Oh. I’m a runner. I’m not really sure why Mr Goldenberg wants to see me, a lowly runner,” I joked, laughing nervously. I was rambling. That was another thing I did when I was nervous. Shut up now, Damian.
The woman looked down at her phone, scrolled down the screen, and then turned to walk away.
“Okay. Take a seat, please. Mr Goldenberg will be ready shortly.”
“Okay. Thank you.” I followed the woman inside and found an office with grey fabric chairs and white walls papered with posters of all Mr Goldenberg’s films.
Thankfully, I didn’t have to wait long before a door down the corridor opened, and the distinct sound of leather shoes on a wooden floor could be heard. I stopped my leg from doing its nervous shaking (another nervous twitch), and I looked up as Mr Goldenberg rounded the corner, followed closely by another young woman, dressed similarly to the previous woman, and wearing a skirt and blouse while holding a clipboard and phone.
“Damian, it’s good to see you. Thank you for coming.”
“Thank you. It’s a privilege, Mr Goldenberg.” I stood and made my way over to him offering my hand. He smiled as he took it. Right away, I felt the nerves and stress leave my body. I instantly felt at ease around him, and I didn’t know why. I felt positive vibes. I was already feeling hopeful. But maybe he was slowly raising my hopes, buttering me up so he could kill me quickly and painlessly.
“Please follow me, Damian.”
I nodded and followed My Goldenberg to his office. When we were inside, his assistants went about pouring water and placing glasses on the large oak desk in the centre.
“Please, take a seat, Damian. Do you want tea or coffee? Or perhaps something stronger? Do you drink scotch?”
He gestured toward a crystal decanter set on a mirrored table in the corner of the room filled with amber liquid. He was offering me scotch? Probably really expensive scotch.
“Sure. Scotch would be good. But whatever you’re having.”
“It’s been a long day,” he said with a sigh. I could hear the stress in his voice. He walked over to the side table and poured two short glasses with scotch out of the crystal decanter.
“I like my scotch neat, but do you prefer ice in yours?”
“No. Neat is good. Thank you.”
“Good man. My father once said, a man who drinks his scotch neat has a strong heart and an equally strong mind. Do you have a strong heart and mind, Damian?”
“I… I’d like to think so.”
“Good.” He set one of the glasses in front of me, then adjusted his suit jacket and took a seat in an antique leather wing-backed chair which squeaked under his weight. He wasn’t overweight but wasn’t a small man either. He had an authoritarian presence that demanded attention whenever he was in a room. He was the epitome of an Alpha male executive type.
“So, Damian, you may be wondering why I’ve called you to my office today.”
“Yes, I was actually.” I took a sip of the scotch. It burned going down my throat, but then filled my body with warmth. I needed to be a bit buzzed if he was going to kill me softly.
“Well, it just so happens I came across one of your screen tests from college. I read the script. It’s really good. I can see why it won the awards it did and got the marks. You deserved it.”
My heart started to beat hard against my rib cage. “Really? Wow. Thank you. That means a lot, sir.”
I was lost for words. I knew my work was available online for those in the know—other college students and professors in the film studies and creative arts degrees. I also had an IMDB profile. But I was certain Peter Goldenberg, three-time Oscar and Golden Globe-winning director wouldn’t have found my work on a college website.
“May I ask how you found my work?”
“Oh, I am on the board at UCLA. It’s my old school. Plus, I am friends with your professor, Melissa Everett. She sends me scripts from time to time. She sent me yours and thought I might like it. She was right. Anyway, back to the purpose of this meeting. Now and then, I choose college graduates to work with as a kind of mentorship. We write scripts and produce short films together, and then we submit them to various film festivals around the world. I like your writing style, Damian, and I think we would be a good match. What do you say?”
“What?” I blurted. I didn’t know what to say.
Mr Goldenberg smiled politely. “Would you like to work together?”
And that was the moment my life changed. That was the moment I got my first big break.
Of course, the road to fame and fortune was treacherous with many obstacles along the way, but I was getting there.
3
Fame didn’t come straight away. As I said, the road to fame and fortune was a long and winding road, a treacherous journey, with multiple speed bumps and detours and traffic jams—even a few accidents.
One of those accidents came soon after I began working with Mr Goldenberg.
In the first year, I wrote multiple scripts with Peter, directed and cut a few scenes to show him what I could do. But they weren’t industry standard.
I thought I had made it when Mr Goldenberg accepted and loved one of my script ideas. We even got funding to begin. We made it all the way to the casting stage. But after we shot our screen tests and sent them off to several production studios, we never made it any further.
So, it was back to the drawing board. Quite literally.
In my second year, the final year of working with Peter, as it turned out, we produced three more scripts. One of which was accepted by Down to the Wire Productions.
Harry and his wife created Down to the Wire together. Harry was a producer and director, and his wife was a make- up artist. They had won a few awards between them and were creating quite a bit of buzz in Hollywood. Big names wanted to work with them. After meeting with Harry, we made a deal. He was looking for a scriptwriter and co-producer—someone to share the load. Writing wasn’t his forte.
“I love your writing style, and I think you’d be a good fit here. This script is good,” Harry said to me that day on departure. “But how would you like to write your own material here, with us?”
It seemed like a dream come true. But I felt bad for leaving Peter.
When I told Peter, he wasn’t upset. In fact, he was thrilled for me.
And just like that, what I thought was a bumpy road, a huge disaster for my career, turned into a happy accident.
I immediately left Peter’s company to go work with Harry.
And the rest, they say, is history.
Well, almost.
I haven’t told you about the most important part of this story. If you think getting my second big break in two years was huge, it was nothing compared to when Kate Brooks walked into my life.
4
It wasn’t long after I’d started working at Down to the Wire that Kate arrived in Hollywood. I remember the day she walked into the office vividly. I’ll never forget that moment.
She came in like a storm in the middle of a long drought, an oasis in the middle of the desert… you get the picture. Her long honey blonde hair cascaded over her breasts in soft curls. She was kissed by the sun, and her perfume smelled of flowers. (I know this because I caught a whiff as she walked passed me toward the screen-testing room.) It wasn’t overpowering. Just perfect. It matched her.
She seemed so natural in a land that was becoming so unreal. So plastic. So fake.
Kate was the real deal.
She was a breath of fresh air.
She was like the moment Dorothy steps out of her house into Oz—into a world that was once black and white and was now in vivid colour.
Before Kate walked into my life, into my office, everything paled in comparison.
The moment I saw her, she took my breath away. All my thoughts and dreams after that were filled with her. She completely and utterly consumed me, heart and soul.
When I stood before her in that small dark room, it wa
s like no one else existed. Harry wasn’t there. It was only Kate and me, which was dangerous because I couldn’t concentrate with her there so close—but yet so far away.
She was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen.
And until the moment I saw her for the first time, I hadn’t known I wanted someone in my life. I hadn’t realised how something, someone, was missing. There was a huge piece of my heart missing, a huge piece of my soul, and at the moment I walked down the corridor at Down to the Wire and saw her standing there, I hadn’t realised I needed her.
I had never believed in love at first sight.
My parents’ relationship was tumultuous at best. It wasn’t the finest example of a relationship, something to base anything on. They fought all the time when I was growing up, which was one reason I fell in love with movies.
Films were my escape when the world was dark and stormy—when they fought. With films, I could be anyone I wanted. I wanted to create happy, magical worlds like the ones on the screen.
I spent most of my time in my bedroom on my laptop or in front of my tv curled up watching movies, or skipping school to go to the first sessions of films at the cinema.
From all the relationships I watched unfold on screen in my favourite films, I vowed to one day find a love like my favourite characters. I wanted a love like Jack and Rose in Titanic, like the couples in The Holiday more recently (a favourite of Kate’s), or even Simba and Nala in The Lion King. I hadn’t realized that what I’d found was true until it was staring me in the face.
5
Some say that guys are oblivious to everything, to the world, to feelings, to relationships. That was a kind of true. But the reality was, I just wasn’t open to it yet.
