Hits and Misses

by Simon Rich

  “What do you want?” Schwab begged.

  Dane handed the critic a piece of paper and whipped out a small, sleek camera.

  “Look into the lens,” he said. “And read your lines.”

  Alan was about to comply when Dane held up his palm. Despite the circumstances, he was still a director, and he couldn’t resist giving a couple of notes.

  “Try to deliver the lines with some joy,” he said. “Your motivation is ‘to reassure.’”

  Alan nodded awkwardly.

  “Okay,” the director whispered. “Action.”

  “This is Alan Schwab,” the critic said. “I have decided to take a one-year leave of absence from writing reviews in order to pursue my secret lifelong dream: to direct a movie of my own.”

  “Cut,” said the director, turning off the camera. “Nice work, really natural. I think we got it.”

  Alan looked at his captor with confusion. “What happens now?”

  Dane giddily explained the rules. Schwab would have one year to complete a feature film. If he failed, refused, or told anybody the circumstances, his torso would explode. Other than those basic stipulations, though, Schwab would enjoy complete creative freedom. He could work in any style or genre that he pleased. Regardless of content or length, Schwab’s film would be given a full theatrical release with his name in giant letters on the poster.

  “You’ll get all the credit,” Dane explained, “positive or negative.”

  He took out a gem-studded Montblanc pen (a prop from Final Battle 4: The Final Battle) and scribbled out a check for thirty million dollars.

  “Here you go,” he said, pressing the check into Schwab’s hand. “That’s a big enough budget to hire Meryl Streep.”

  Schwab winced as the bunker doors slid open, flooding his eyes with California sunlight.

  “Now it’s your turn,” the director told him. “Now you go make a fucking movie.”

  Dane flew east in his private jet, his face suffused with pleasure. In his lap was an iPad opened to a recent post on Deadline. He’d put off reading it for several hours, to better savor the experience, but he couldn’t hold out any longer. He picked up the tablet and scrolled through the paragraphs, pausing after each, like he did when eating uni rolls at Masa.

  Schwab Film in Trouble, Sources Say

  One year ago, esteemed critic Alan Schwab shocked the film community by publicly declaring his ambition to direct a film himself. From day one, expectations were sky-high. Schwab is considered one of the world’s foremost authorities on film, and cinephiles everywhere assumed his work would be up to his own high standards. However, as production comes to a close, Schwab’s project is rumored to be struggling, with some on-set sources calling it “a scary situation.” “He cries all the time,” said one crew member, who spoke to me on the condition of anonymity. “And whenever somebody asks him a question, like how to block a scene or what shot he wants next, he falls to his knees and starts whispering, ‘I can’t take it anymore.’ That’s usually when he passes out one of his weird notes.”

  Schwab’s handwritten notes are becoming something of a legend on the lot. I’ve been shown several, and even by the standards of feature directors, the letters are eccentric. They always begin in the same way, with a plea for the recipient to “not say anything” because he’s “probably being watched.” He then pleads with them to “find a surgeon” to “silently operate on his chest” and “take out the detonator in [his] chest.”

  It’s unclear what’s happening to Schwab. Some of my sources theorize that the pressures of directing have caused him to have a psychotic breakdown. Others are more charitable.

  “It’s a little unusual to pass out notes like that,” said one studio veteran. “I mean, for a director to beg the crew to operate on his body, that’s definitely strange. But compared to David O. Russell? It’s not that shocking.”

  Experts agree that if this were a studio venture, Schwab would have been removed from the feature long ago. But his independent financier, who continues to remain anonymous, has vowed to stick with the newbie director, no matter what.

  “We wholeheartedly believe in Alan Schwab’s vision,” wrote the unknown benefactor in a recent online statement, “and we are excited to share that vision with the world.”

  Schwab’s film, Help Me, There’s a Bomb in My Chest, I’m Not Pitching Titles, This Is Real!, will premiere tomorrow at the Cannes Film Festival.

  Dane gazed out the window as the sandy French shore came into view. He had fallen behind on his latest Final Battle sequel (Final Battle 5: Armistice). But he felt no desire to work on the script. His masterpiece was already in progress.

  Three hundred reporters looked on curiously as Alan Schwab took the stage to introduce his film. He was dressed like a typical first-time director, in a slightly rumpled, rented black tuxedo. But there were clues that something was amiss. His eyes were bloodshot, as if he hadn’t slept in days, and his forehead was coated with sweat. He was also accompanied by a man in a black face mask, who stood silently beside him, holding what looked like a bomb detonator.

  “This is a real movie,” Schwab began, shooting nervous glances at the masked man. “I made it by choice.” He covered his face with his hands and gave himself over to a lengthy crying jag. “I’m scared,” he murmured finally. “I’m scared.”

  The audience awkwardly applauded as the lights began to dim.

  “I can’t take this anymore,” Schwab whimpered to his captor as they stood in the wings. “Just kill me. Kill me!”

  “Not a chance,” Dane said. “You’re going to live through this experience. You’re going to see what it’s like to step into the arena and fail before the throngs. To get a taste of your own medicine, a sip of your own—”

  He’d prepared several pages of this sort of dialogue, but before he could finish reciting it all, he became aware of a disconcerting sound.

  Applause.

  Dane flew west in his private jet, his face suffused with pain. His iPad sat on his lap, opened to a recent post on Deadline. It wasn’t easy, but after several hours, he forced himself to scroll through the paragraphs.

  Alan Schwab Dazzles Cannes

  with Experimental Masterpiece

  Once in a generation a film emerges with so much daring it threatens to disrupt the entire medium. Help Me, There’s a Bomb in My Chest, I’m Not Pitching Titles, This Is Real! may be such a film. At fourteen minutes, Help Me is short by the standards of most feature films. But don’t let the running time fool you. Alan Schwab’s film contains more ingenuity than all the studio releases of the past ten years combined.

  The film opens with a haunting image. An unnamed woman (played with graceful understatement by Meryl Streep) stands in the middle of what appears to be a Hollywood soundstage. A frightened man, played by Schwab himself, runs over to her and presses a note into her hands.

  “Help me,” he whispers. “There’s a bomb in my chest. Oh God, help me.”

  The shot ends abruptly—with a swift cut to black.

  The rest of the film consists of variations on this theme. Again and again, Schwab’s “frightened man” character approaches people, desperately begging for help and demanding that they perform surgery on his body to “remove the bomb” or “get rid of the bomb.” Sometimes, we hear his cries offscreen. Occasionally, he stares right into camera, as if asking us, the audience, to assist him.

  “There’s a bomb in my chest,” he tells us as tears stream down his ashen, haunted face. “This isn’t made-up. I don’t want to direct this movie. I’m doing it because someone put a bomb in my chest and he threatened me. I’m afraid to say his name because he’ll kill me. Oh God, help me. I’m so scared. I need surgery to remove the bomb from my chest!”

  One hopes that Schwab will remove more from his chest. More honesty, more emotion, more art. The world would be a richer place for it.

  Does Help Me, There’s a Bomb in My Chest, I’m Not Pitching Titles, This Is Real! have its flaws? Of c
ourse. The film can feel repetitive at times, given the fact that so much of the dialogue consists of the same few phrases said over and over again (most notably “Help me” and “There’s a bomb inside my chest”). But these are minor quibbles. If you like your films slick and sanitized, you can go to your local multiplex and watch the latest offering from Michael Dane.

  Or, like Schwab, you can take a risk. You can see Schwab’s film, open up your chest, and see the human heart beating inside.

  Michael Dane powered down his iPad. Then, for the first time in his life, he considered the option of suicide. He didn’t have any weapons in his jet. Although his gem-studded Montblanc fountain pen was reasonably sharp. He took it out of his pocket and stared at its glistening nib. He wondered what it would look like to see it slash into his wrist.

  It would be pretty cool-looking, actually. Especially if you scored it with some dubstep and shot it at a hundred frames a second. He could see the parabolic arc of blood, rising and falling out of frame. It could be the opening shot of a major battle.

  Perhaps even a Final Battle.

  He pressed the pen nib lightly to his wrist and carefully wrote himself a note:

  Final Battle 5 intro shot—pen slash?

  It was only a start, but it had potential. He’d figure out the rest when he got back to Los Angeles. He couldn’t wait to land. He was Michael Dane, God damn it, and he had work to do.

  Stage 13

  Yoni was haunted by his student loan debt. He felt its weight whenever he purchased a granola bar or fed quarters into a washing machine. As of this morning, he owed $97,201.83. And the worst part was, he’d spent it all on nothing.

  Since graduating from film school seven years ago, Yoni’s filmmaking career had gone from promising to catastrophic. He’d managed to direct a few dog food commercials, but the best he could say about them was that, from a legal standpoint, the animals had not been abused. His non-dog work was similarly bleak: Hardee’s training videos, infomercials designed to trick the elderly, and workout DVDs for exercise programs that were at best a scam and at worst medically dangerous.

  Yoni knew his best hope was to move back into his parents’ house in Queens. His mother had befriended the owner of a successful mulch business, and according to her frequent emails, there was a job “with his name on it.” Yoni wasn’t sure what his role at the mulch business would be. Making it, selling it, spreading it? But anything was better than staying in Los Angeles, chasing a dream he knew was dead. He was thirty-four years old. If things were going to happen for him, they would’ve happened by now.

  Yoni was browsing some cheap flights back east when his cracked iPhone buzzed in his pocket. He squinted at the unknown number. He knew he should ignore the call; it was almost certainly a debt collection agency. But the 323 area code gave him pause. Whoever was calling him was calling from Hollywood itself. His phone rang a third time, then a fourth, then a fifth. It was about to go to voicemail when Yoni cursed at himself under his breath and answered.

  “I’m glad you could make it,” said Nikki Coleman, an elegantly dressed executive of indeterminate age. “Was parking all right?”

  Yoni nodded enthusiastically, even though he’d come by Lyft. It was the first time he’d ever been invited to a major movie studio. He had no idea how Paragon had gotten his number and was almost positive they had contacted him as the result of some administrative error. Still, he was determined to make a good impression.

  “I’ll cut to the chase,” Nikki said as her handsome assistant handed Yoni an impressively cold bottle of Fiji water. “The reason I called is because we’ve been watching your work for some time, and we’re considering hiring you for a major project.”

  Several seconds passed in silence.

  “Like, a directing thing?” Yoni asked.

  “Yes,” Nikki said patiently. “A directing thing.”

  Yoni shook his head in disbelief. “What made you think of me?”

  Nikki smiled as broadly as she could, given her many facial surgeries. “We’ve had some problems on set,” she said. “I won’t go into specifics right now. But we need someone with experience working with unconventional talent.”

  Yoni nodded. If there was one skill he had, it was dealing with temperamental stars. He’d once directed a workout tape starring a bodybuilder who was addicted, in his own words, to “rage.”

  “Who is it?” he whispered. It was his first taste of industry gossip, and he was excited. “Is it Bale?”

  Nikki nodded subtly at her assistant, who held up a giant stack of paper.

  “Before I can tell you about the project,” Nikki said, “I need you to sign a nondisclosure agreement.”

  Yoni flipped through the baffling pile of pages. “What does this all mean, exactly?”

  “It’s just standard boilerplate,” Nikki assured him. “All it says is that you’ll keep everything you hear and see today a secret, no matter how shocking or horrific.”

  “Huh,” Yoni said. He thought about his options and then neatly signed the contract. “So…what happens now?”

  Nikki’s eyes narrowed. “You meet her.”

  Yoni sat in the passenger seat of Nikki’s golf cart as she sped them through the lot. He recognized some of the sets from movies—the police station from a car chase franchise, the haunted graveyard from a recent thriller. Gradually, though, as they drove through the studio, the sets grew less familiar. They passed a dated mock-up of a subway station, covered in 1980s-style graffiti, then a decrepit Wild West set. It was another ten minutes before the cart came to a stop.

  “Here we are,” Nikki said. “Stage 13.”

  Yoni climbed out of the golf cart and followed Nikki over to a barren concrete structure. The other soundstages they’d passed, Yoni noticed, had golden plaques affixed to their front doors, commemorating the films that had been shot there. Stage 13, in contrast, was eerily unmarked. The grass outside had been neglected, and the crumbling wooden door creaked open as they neared it, as if pushed by some knowing, spectral force.

  “So,” Yoni asked cautiously, “what’s the deal here?”

  Nikki dispassionately summarized the building’s history. The stage was built in 1914 to produce silent one-reelers. It thrived for a couple of years, producing racist but profitable hits, like Hong Kong Harry. Sometime in the twenties, though, it began to acquire a “negative reputation.” A 1926 ice-skating musical was shut down in the middle of production due to a catastrophic freezer explosion. Since then, the stage had been the site of numerous violent accidents: fallen lights, snapped riggings, mysterious electrical fires. After World War II, the stage fell into disuse. It was revived in the 1950s for a Christmas movie, but the film was abandoned when the director went insane and demanded to be given a lobotomy.

  “And this is where I would be working?” Yoni asked.

  “Yes,” Nikki said.

  Yoni nodded. It was at times like these that he wished he belonged to some kind of union.

  “After you,” Nikki said.

  Yoni took a deep breath and stepped into the darkened soundstage. He was searching in vain for a light switch when a sparkling figure burst into view overhead, as bright as an antique camera flash. By the time Yoni regained his vision, the glittering presence was floating down toward him from the ceiling. She was slightly translucent, with sunken eyes and fiery red hair.

  “What’s that?” Yoni asked.

  “That’s Clara,” Nikki said. “She’s a ghost.”

  Yoni had some follow-up questions, but before he could ask them, Nikki bolted for the exit, slamming the heavy door behind her.

  Yoni turned reluctantly toward Clara. At some point she had floated down to eye level. He could feel her cold breath on his face.

  “Hi,” he said uneasily. “My name’s Yoni.”

  Her bloodred lips curled into a smile. “The new director,” she said.

  “Yep!” Yoni said, smiling brightly to conceal his mounting terror. “It’s nice to meet you.”<
br />
  He held out his hand, and she shook it to the best of her ability, her translucent fingers passing through his flesh.

  “Cool!” Yoni said. “Cool, cool.” He could see Clara better now. She didn’t look like a traditional Hollywood actress. But her face was certainly captivating: sunken eyes, long black lashes, ghoulishly white skin. Yoni couldn’t tell how much of her aesthetic was a personal style choice and how much a result of her being dead. In either case, it worked; Yoni couldn’t take his eyes off her.

  “How long have you been here?” he asked.

  “Since 1922,” she said. “I was over for a screen test. It was my seventh audition in three days, and I was pretty hopped up on reds. Guess I took too many. Anyway, I passed out and cracked my head over there.”

  She pointed at a faded red stain on the concrete.

  Yoni winced. “Did it hurt?”

  Clara shook her head. “I fell right asleep. And when I woke up, there’s this tall, golden man staring down at me. And he tells me it’s time to leave this world behind. ‘Sweet child,’ he says. ‘You’ve been struggling so long. Striving and suffering. It’s made us angels weep. But be not afraid. Soon you will be in the warm embrace of God, and all your pain will cease to be. Come, my darling child, and bask in the light of heaven.’ So I stand up and look into his big golden eyes. And I say, ‘Bullshit. I’m not leaving this town until I’m a fucking star.’ So he smiles down at me and says, ‘Be at peace, my child. Fame and success are but man-made idols. And once thou art in heaven, thou shalt learn there’s no such thing as worldly glory, for in God’s eyes, all creatures are made equal.’ And I say, ‘If I wanted to be equal, I would have stayed in Galveston, Texas. I have a screen test in two hours to play the ingénue in a one-reeler, and if you make me miss it, I swear I’m going to kill you.’ And he reaches out and takes my hand and starts to lift me up off the ground, to heaven or wherever. So I take out my hairpin and I stab him as hard as I can in his wing. Just stab him and stab him and stab him. And he can’t feel pain because he’s an angel, but eventually he’s like, ‘Stop. That’s annoying.’ And I say, ‘I’m gonna stab you all the way up to heaven unless you let me go!’ And he says, ‘You’re crazy, Pamela.’ And I say, “My name’s Clara Ginger now. I changed it to look better on marquees. Tell God and everyone to stop calling me Pamela. I’m not Pamela anymore. It’s Clara Ginger, damn it!’ And I keep stabbing him in the wing and the face. And eventually he loses his cool and drops the whole goody-two-shoes bit and says, ‘You’re one crazy bitch.’ So I look him in his golden eyes and say, ‘You can eat my ass.’” She chuckled proudly at the memory. “Anyway. Since then I’ve been here.”