by Mike McCrary
“Show me.”
I produce a money roll that would make an elephant choke. It’s his eyes that flare this time. I could have flashed him a few dead presidents and he might have been appeased, but I wanted to create the effect of shock and awe.
His lips part, revealing a rather shitty set of yellowish teeth. Catholic Church must not have a strong dental plan. He pulls a gun and says, “What’s gonna stop me from putting two in your chest and taking a walk with that roll?”
One might think, Oh shit, I bet that Hollywood dipshit didn’t think that was going to happen. I bet he’s going to shit his overpriced pants. That would be incorrect. I thought of this scenario, along with others. I spent the better part of three months researching the criminal underworld for a rewrite gig that went to shit a few years ago. Read everything I could get my hands on. You never know when knowledge will come in handy. Not saying I’m an expert in understanding the criminal mind. What I am saying is that I’ve performed a reasonable amount of homework on people like The Pope and I know an awful lot about quite a bit.
Staring down the barrel of his gun, I say, “This is a taste, only a taste. If you shoot me, you don’t get the real money.” I toss him the roll. He fumbles it, the thick rubber band–bound bank bouncing two, three times before he gets control of it. I was worried for a second that he might shoot himself in the face while trying to catch it. That would be unfortunate from a moral point of view, of course, but more to the point, it would end my project before it started. Erase all the fine work I’ve done up until now. I’d rather not go through all that again. The Pope flips through the bills as if he’s counting it. We both know that’s bullshit. He can’t count that high. If this guy made it past second grade, it’d be a miracle of the educational system.
Satisfied with the flip-tally, The Pope tries to find a cool way to pocket the money. It’s so fat he can’t jam it into his front pockets and struggles while trying to navigate the complexities of the cargo pockets. After a feeble attempt or two, he gives up and holds it in his chubby paw.
“Okay. What’s the score?” he asks.
“Not a score, per se. Well, yes, I guess there is a score. I don’t have anything planned—”
“What the fuck are you babbling about?”
“I need you to get me into a crew.”
“A crew? What in the fuck is a crew?”
“A crew. A group of bank robbers.”
The Pope blinks.
I keep getting this reaction. Why?
“I need you to get me into a group of people who are planning to rob a bank.”
More blinking.
“Multiple banks or jobs would be better,” I say.
He snickers, turning to exit the room.
“Wait,” I call out. “Where you going?”
The Pope turns back. “This is a joke, man. How do you think this thing works? You think we go to Starbucks? Work on a brainstorming, bullshit, butt-ache session?”
“I was told you knew people.”
“I do. All kinds.”
“Any of them rob banks?” I ask.
“No comment.”
“If you can work me into a meeting with these people, then there’s a compensation package to make it worth everybody’s time.”
“Yeah, you kinda said that already.”
“I am telling you again so you can tell all these people you know that if they let me come along and do this thing, we can work out a deal that will make everybody happy.”
The Pope looks to the money roll in his hand, giving it a toss as if checking the weight again. He looks to me. “I’ll see what I can do. What are the strings attached to this thing?”
“Strings? No strings. String-less, really.”
“Always strings on money.”
“Like I said, let me come along on a score. And, oh yeah, I need to film it all.”
The Pope blinks.
“I’ve got some small gear, they won’t even know—”
He dives at me, his charging hard throwing me against the back wall with a bounce. The Pope’s speed and strength have taken me completely by surprise. Appearances are deceiving as hell.
“You filming me right now, motherfucker?”
I’ve already started removing myself from the room, reshuffle my mental deck and try to come back with a better version of me.
Wait for it…
There.
I say, “Motherfucker, if I wanted to film you, you won’t know it anyway. So I’m gonna tell you no, but the reality is you don’t know and you will never truly know until I want you to.”
The Pope goes back to blinking.
He releases me.
“Now fly away, Pope. Sorry, The Pope. Find me a crew, a good one, and if you do good, you’ll get a treat.”
Blank stare.
“You feeling me, shitbird?” I say.
He nods, giving me a hint of sneer. Difficult to read, but I keep at it.
“Good. You give me a jingle when you’ve pondered this thing properly.”
The Pope jots down my number onto his hand—glad it’s not just me—and leaves the massage room.
Have to admit, I am impressed with myself for pulling that directly from my firmly clenched anus. I let a second or two pass to allow some time for reflection. To drink in what a badass I am.
Reflection time ends as I hear what sounds like a dude reaching orgasm next door.
A small part of me hopes I’ll never see The Pope again. Just the thought of this being the tip of the proverbial iceberg, the tip of the spear, the tip of the large penis swollen and ready to do me harm, all of this has developed a heightened level of anxiety within me.
Of course the more positive, glass-half-full side of the equation has me excited, optimistic even, that this horrific feeling in my stomach means my instincts are correct. My hypothesis is strong, if not dead-solid perfect. If I’m thinking like this, then what will an audience think? The scarier the roller coaster, the longer the line. I think Wilson said that before he left for ‘Stan.
The asshole.
Faker.
Fuckhead.
Perhaps I am onto something. Something huge. Something that will have the studios lined up with drool-stained checkbooks held wide open. Pens in hand poised and ready to write numbers with three commas.
Fuck the analytics. Fuck what Accounting thinks on this. This project smells like a winner, and we all want a taste.
Negative, glass-half-empty thoughts make a roaring comeback. Always do. Images flash and scream along the inside track of my brain. All of W. Gains, my former childhood friend, current model filmmaker, current model asshole.
I can see him.
He’s on all the late-night talk shows telling jokes and discussing his next film: “It’s a bit of a departure for me. It’s a think piece about a slice of present-day life for a man whose dreams faded and died. A film documenting a semi-comfortable life in suburban hell.” The audience laughs and claps, some whoop, others have signs they’ve brought from home. Living the life I should be living.
I can see it all.
The theater of my broken brain.
I throw up on the massage table.
More of a dry heave; my body forgot that I threw up in the alley earlier at the Jiggle Queen.
Momma never told me there’d be days like these.
26
Pulling the bottle of Bulleit Bourbon from the brown bag, I realize I’ve got some work to do.
Just hung up with The Pope. We’re going to meet at 2:15 A.M. at some park in Jersey. I wanted the meet to take place out in the open so there aren’t any unwanted executions.
Namely mine.
That gives me about four hours to figure this thing out. The technical side I’ve worked out already. Before I picked up the bourbon, I stopped by Foto Cares on West Twenty-Second. Picked up all the gear I needed. Latest GoPro makes it easy to pull something like this off. The “Military Package” is a one-stop bucket of camera necessities
for a project such as this. The HERO4 Black, Sportsman Mount, Blackout Housing, Smart Remote, LCD Touch BacPac, NVG (night vision goggle) mount, helmet mount, helmet, various curved and flat mounts (never know what angles I’ll need out there), Chesty chest harness camera mount, and multiple portable hard drives with a minimum of one terabyte each of storage. Video eats drive space, and I anticipate shooting a shit-ton of footage so I can hack it all together later. This thing will come to life in the edit. The cut will pull together a patchwork quilt of visceral images that will shake the soul—hopefully. Or, it could turn out to be a complete shitshow that looks like it was pulled together by toothless hillbillies coming down from a three-day rubbing-alcohol bender.
In addition to all this gear, I’ve picked up two loaded Apple laptops with as much firepower as they can hold. Updated Final Cut Pro on both. Also snatched up some mics. Sound is a major problem. If it’s great, nobody really talks about it, but if it sucks, you are fucked with a capital motherfucking F. I chose a couple of Sennheisers and an H4n. Got it all packed up nice and tight in North Face bags I picked up at REI.
Next? The eternal question: What to wear?
Tried to pack up clothes I thought would work for any situation I might get into. Four pairs of jeans (various brands), ten T-shirts (mostly black and gray—seems appropriate), three pairs of REI Adventures pants (I know, the marketing got me), a variety of socks, a lot of Tommy John underwear, and three pairs of Brooks running shoes in various colors. Of course I packed the appropriate toiletries as well. It sounds stupid, but I did actually bring a black ski mask just in case I need one.
It’s not the tech stuff or the everyday things I need to prepare. I know the equipment. Used most of it, or its earlier versions, on both of my films and on different shoots. Also ran with Red Epic MX and the ARRI Alexa XT, which are more traditional, mainstream cameras for shooting today’s digital films. I used the GoPro stuff to get that gritty, put-you-in-the-action feel I craved for certain scenes. I want this piece to be all grit and in-the-shit type of feel. What I need to do now is the hard part, a mental exercise into insanity. I need to brainstorm scenarios and the what-ifs of what might happen out there in the wild.
I take a pull from the bottle.
Nibble on a Quarter Pounder. I know it’s not a great choice, but you know what? Sometimes it is.
Hoping it will open up the floodgates of ideas.
It does not.
The empty yellow legal pad is mocking the piss out of me. The blank page has brought down many a good writer.
I heard a story that Sacha Baron Cohen gathered his writing team together so they could hash out scripts of sorts before he went out for his insane brand of films. They would work through all the possibilities of what might happen in real-world situations. Like, say, if Sacha said this, the angered common folk might say or do this and so on.
Worst case? Sacha might catch a beating, get arrested, or get sued.
Me? I’ve already caught a bit of a beating. More concerned about getting shot, gutted, or worse.
Another pull of bourbon, feel the good burn.
I shut my eyes. Let the ideas flow.
Nope.
Nothing.
Not a damn thing.
One thing is certain. It’s all about the money. The money is the only thing that’ll keep me alive. That is key. I have to protect that. If I somehow lose containment of the money, of where it is or how to access it, then they will kill me without hesitation. The Pope has already proven that. That tubby, crazy bastard would have shot me dead, taken my cash, and left my body for Penny to deal with.
That much is obvious.
Made wire-tight arrangements between my brother, me, and the brokerage company that holds my LLC account. I wanted there to be no room for interpretation or misunderstanding. I made Alex repeat everything back to me, three times. I called the brokerage company five times to make sure I got the same answer on what paperwork they needed and if they needed notaries or whatever. The big concern, the real worry, is the amount. My only hope is that it’s enough. That it’s an acceptable amount. We are talking about criminals. One can safely assume they have taken lives before. Perhaps frequently. Is the amount of money I’m offering going to be enough for these people to risk having me around? Enough for them to let me film them doing their dirty deeds? It’s the question everybody asks themselves at one time in their lives or another.
Is it enough?
I have come up with a set of rules in my head, but I need to be flexible on them based on what their response is. Have to be able to tailor my rules with what they want. If they say X, then I have to be able to counter with Y and do it at a moment’s notice. Also, I must be able to detect if they are completely full of shit, trying to string me along long enough so they can figure out how to separate me from my money. This is going to be tricky. Could be a daily struggle. Could easily be a constantly changing scenario that will be constantly reassessed and recalibrated. If you believe there is no honor among thieves, then you’ve probably already done the math and determined that I’m a dead man.
Another pull.
And another.
And another.
I look to the clock. Slightly more than seven minutes have passed. My yellow legal pad is completely empty, but my bourbon is mostly full.
Another pull.
Come on, brain. Work, piece of shit.
Nothing.
Not a damn thing.
27
Tisha Durden was a B-list porn star.
Her real name is Anne, I think. She lied frequently, but she chose Tisha Durden because she thought it was a clever play on Palahniuk’s Fight Club character.
You be the judge.
She’s everything you’d expect. A dirty blonde and a dirty sexy woman with a sizable investment in her sizable chest. Like I said earlier, I appreciated the breasts. It was what they were attached to that I had issues with. Not completely sure I ever knew her. I mean, not really, you know, the way they say you’re supposed to know your spouse. Straight answers and truth were not her best subjects. She held a PhD in sex, drugs, and wild bursts of wacko. Tisha D (as she was known in some circles) was addicted to everything, terrifying in bed, and completely insane.
She was also my third wife.
I’ll save the stories about the first two, mainly because Tisha incorporated the best and worst of those and added her own personal spin on the marriage experience. Snorting, blowing, bonking her way across the universe. Looking back, should have understood her way of life was not sustainable. If you’ve never visited that side of life, you absolutely should. Amazing thing to be a part of. When it was good, it was better than you could possibly imagine. When it was bad—holy fucking shit it was bad.
It’s hard to get an accurate number, but I’d guess a high percentage of folks in my current neighborhood know her work. Maybe too well. They’d never admit it, of course. Not easy to grab a burger after church and talk to the new neighbor from that sinful city (Los Angeles) about the porn they’ve been yanking it to and, in turn, hating themselves for doing it.
Life with Tisha was a commitment to uncertainty.
One day she’d bring home a coworker (male or female adult film actor, depending on her frame of mind), another day she’d bring in a homeless person and demand I grab the drop cloths, a bottle of vodka, and dive in. The next day she’d clean up, put on her most conservative patterned dress, and spend all day at church. Something that covered her knees; those drop cloths can leave marks if you’re a little too vigorous with your motion. The day after her church visit, she’d snort coke off her Bible.
Her only constant in life was her love of vodka. Ketel One, tonic, lime slice over crushed ice, to be precise. She might have put away a bottle a day, could’ve been more. I lost count. Please don’t get the impression I was an innocent bystander in all this.
Oh no, I was an extremely active participant.
I dove face-first into the piles laid out on those dr
op cloths. Went to church. Held her hand as she cried during the sermons and as she snorted lines off the Old Testament. Also drank a barrel or two of Ketel One and tonics. And yes, I preferred the crushed ice as well.
It’s just better, dammit.
When normal people would come by the house, we’d have to do a mad cleanup job that included picking up dildos, drugs, instruments for drug use, empty bottles of vodka, empty bottles of K-Y, and one time, I had to shove a homeless guy out the bathroom window before Tisha’s mom walked in.
I gave him a vodka bottle and a couple of hundreds.
I’m not an animal.
All that, that life, was made possible by the success of my first film. When things were rolling, meaning when I was a hot commodity, life was pretty damn great. There was really no need to question my relationship with Tisha. Analyzing our feelings or what we meant to each other was an exercise in futility. Why bother? “It ain’t broke, don’t fix it” school of philosophy.
Failure can shine a bright-ass light on a lot of things you’d rather not discuss.
Like the great philosopher Tyson once said, “Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”
Shockingly, when my second film was a disaster, Tisha was not all that supportive. No, not at all, not even slightly. The opening weekend numbers came in and she turned a bit sour on our marriage. I think five people saw the film on the opening Friday. That’s not fancy Hollywood talk for “five million.” I mean five fucking people paid to see my second film at the Friday opening.
Tisha caught wind of this info and tried to rape me with a vodka bottle.
I’d like to say that was the first time, it’s just the other times were done with more affection and a sense of fun. This was angry stuff. We fought that night. There were elevated verbal jabs thrown. Fists flew. Dishes sailed. Windows smashed. Holes in doors. Bones fractured.
When the cops showed up, the house looked like a pack of coked-up rhinos got trapped and couldn’t find a way out. Tisha smashed a bottle over my head. Knocked me out cold. She proceeded to cut me with the glass from the busted bottle and wrote “Pig Fucker” on the wall with my blood. Still have a scar that looks a little like a pissed-off Yoda on my chest. After the hospital released me, Alex got a quick divorce pushed through. Shortly thereafter I ended up here at my current suburban residence.
