by Dave Daren
“What? I don’t even know that song,” he said.
I laughed. In reality, it was even before my time. I only knew it as a joke.
“Well, Forrest Gump walked to this beach, dude,” I said.
“Still don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.
“Forrest Gump?” I asked.
“Forrest Gump? That was like the lamest movie ever,” he said. “You watch some boring ass shit.”
I laughed. “I’m actually with you on that one. I had to watch it for a school project one time.”
“Geez, I’m sorry that happened to you,” he said.
I laughed. “Okay, I’m just trying to say this beach is famous.”
“You could have just left it at that,” he said.
“Yeah, I could have,” I said.
“You really miss it here, don’t you?” Phoenix asked.
I smiled ruefully. “Maybe a bit.”
Santa Monica Pier is about half an hour from the airport, and we made it in a little less than that. As we navigated down the PCH, the traffic slowed as the ocean wasn’t far.
“Palm trees,” Phoenix stated.
“Yep,” I said. “They’re everywhere. It gets to where they’re not even special.”
I did miss the palm trees, though. That and the mountains, real mountains not like our red rocks in Sedona. No, I missed the L.A. mountains, that purple fog horizon that you can see from almost any place in the city.
We got to the end of the highway and reached the Santa Monica Pier. The pier is one of the top tourist destinations in Los Angeles. There is an entire boardwalk and full of shops and eateries to explore, and they have events and live music and a whole culture.
“It’s really the ocean,” he said.
“Yep,” I said. “That’s the Pacific. The other side of this is Japan.”
He smiled thoughtfully. “So you could swim to Japan from here.”
“Well,” I said. “There are a couple million sharks between here and there.”
“Yeah, that’s kind of buzz kill,” he said.
“A little, yeah,” I said.
I parked on a bridge, and we sat on the hood of the car and watched the waves roll in. I set my phone alarm for when we needed to leave. We weren’t dressed for the sand and water, so we just watched tide roll in and out, blue foaming waves.
I rested my arms on my knees and looked up at the clear blue sky. The seagulls flew overhead, their constant cry a soft melody against the rhythmic roar of the water.
“It smells like dead fish,” Phoenix said.
“Yeah, I know,” I said. “It always mystifies me how fragrance companies sell things called ‘ocean breeze’ or ‘island mist.’ Ugh.”
He smiled and bounced around a little, which let the wind hit his face and ruffle his air. I wondered if he had the whole LA creative type inside of him waiting to come out.
“Now tell me about this deal,” I said. “Do they want you to sell the rights, or do they want to hire you as a hands-on producer for a remake?”
“I’m not sure,” he said. “I think the first.”
“What do you want?” I asked.
“Well,” he said. “If they’re going to do a remake, I want to be in the middle of it.”
“So then you want to produce?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he said.
“You’ll need to clarify if that’s what they’re offering,” I said. “You also need to find out what kind of creative control they’re offering and what you want. You also need to think about what kind of royalty agreement you want before you go in. This where it can get sticky.”
“Okay,” Phoenix nodded as he took everything in. “I trust your advice in all this.”
“The standard royalty agreement for a first time producer of an independent film is about two to five percent of the budget. So, if the film’s budget is, say, two million, then your cut would be $50,000.”
“Whoa,” he said. “I thought indie films didn’t make any money.”
“Well,” I said. “They don’t. That’s good money off the top, but most independent films take several years to go from start to finish. The average is about five years.”
“It takes five years to make a movie?” he asked incredulously.
“For an independent project, that’s average,” I said. “Once you get to shooting, it takes a few weeks. But, that’s far, far, down the road. There’s a lot that has to happen first. For example, because it is professional, every human being on the project has to get paid. It’s not like when you’re doing it with your friends, they just do it because you’re friends.”
“Right,” he said.
“So, there’s a lot of fundraising that comes into play, and things get stalled out for money a lot,” I said.
“I can see that,” he said.
“So, you may get a $50,000 check right off the top, but that’s all you’ll get from them for two or three years worth of full-time work on the project. So, you may be looking at less than fifteen grand a year.”
“Really?” he said.
“Unfortunately,” I said. “Now, that’s based on a two million dollar budget, which is the low end. Once you work your way up, you can command higher percentages, and your work will be subjected to higher budgets.”
“Did you sign anything at all with them?” I asked.
“Just a release,” he said. “It’s in my email.”
“Forward it to me,” I said.
He pulled out his phone and sent me the email. I downloaded the attachment, and had barely pulled it up, when my phone alarm beeped. Phoenix looked disappointed to leave.
“Let’s do this,” I said.
He looked a little nervous. “Yeah, let’s do this.”
The GPS led us to a two story office building in an older side of town. Inside, the hallway had a courtyard with an ample indoor garden with benches, trees, and even a koi pond with a fountain. A skylight from the vaulted ceiling washed the tranquil space with soothing light.
We took a marble staircase to the second floor to the suite number we had been given for Blue Light Productions. We arrived and Phoenix straightened his hair.
“You look great,” I told him. “You are the star here. You’re the one they want, not the other way around.”
“You’re right,” he said.
Through the glass wall, we could see the logo for Blue Light Productions emblazoned on the inside. We walked in, and the place screamed “young start up.”
The door opened to an expansive lobby area with just a couple of Ikea plastic chairs. There was a reception desk, but it was just a work table with a phone and was currently abandoned.
The remainder of the lobby area was empty, and it looked as if this would be where the cubicles should be installed but weren’t yet. The lobby area was lined with open doored offices, where we could hear an occasional phone ring. Beyond that, it seemed like we were trespassing on vacant office space.
“Who is your contact?” I asked Phoenix.
“His name is Blake Sawyer,” he said.
I tapped on an open office door, and a beautiful dark-haired young woman greeted me. She looked vaguely familiar but I couldn’t place her. She seemed to about twenty-seven and had voluminous hair and huge dark eyes, with hints of Italian ancestry. She wore a brown satin v-neck blouse, dress jeans, and black heels.
“Hello,” she said. “Can I help you?”
“We have a meeting with Blake Sawyer,” I said.
“Blake’s is the office at the end of the hall,” she said with a slight southern twang to her otherwise slick professional demeanor. She picked up the phone. “Could I get your name?”
“I’m Phoenix Irving,” Phoenix piped up from behind me.
“Just one moment,” she said and dialed the phone. “Blake, the filmmaker, Phoenix, is here... Thanks.”
She set down the phone and smiled. “If you would like to wait just a moment, he’ll be with you. Help yourselves to coffee and wa
ter.”
“Thanks,” I said, and we took a seat in the lobby. I pulled up the release on my tablet and started to read it. After a few minutes, I noticed Phoenix’s face started to look a little green.
“You okay there?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he said.
“Nervous?” I asked.
“Very,” he laughed. “I should have blazed one before this to chill a bit.”
“Why didn’t you?” I asked.
“What?” he responded with a mix of shock and confusion.
“It’s legal here, how did you not know that?” I laughed.
“I don’t… uhh… stay abreast of changes in the law like you,” he responded with careful consideration.
“It was pretty big news,” I chuckled.
“You think I trust any news from a corporation?” my brother asked as if I was an idiot for doing so myself.
“Either way, you’re going to do fine,” I said. “You have something they want. You have the upper hand here, not them. Remember that.”
“That’s even worse,” he said and wiped his sweaty palms on his jeans. “What if they buy it, it’s the deal of a lifetime, and we get into this film, and I blow it?”
“Well,” I said. “First of all, you can’t think that way. You’ve got to believe in yourself. Second of all, if you blow it, you’ve got to look at it as a learning process. What have you learned? Already, I’m sure you’ve learned a ton just getting this far, right?”
“Yeah,” he said.
“So,” I said. “The further you get into this movie, the more you’ll learn. And, if, somewhere along the way, you do blow it, you will have learned that much more about producing a movie, right?”
“Right,” he said, still not quite convinced.
“Do you think Steven Spielberg knew what he was doing when he was nineteen?” I asked after a brief pause.
Phoenix chuckled. “No, probably not.”
“I don’t know much about his career,” I said. “But I would bet anything that if you read his biography, you would find all kinds of deals he screwed up, or projects that didn’t work out, and then he learned from them and got better.”
Phoenix smiled and nodded slowly. “Yeah.”
“So,” I said. “If this deal doesn’t pan out well, there will be other deals, and there will be other movies. So, just relax and enjoy this ride for what it is, and however long you’re on it. Because, this could be a really fun ride.”
He grinned, and his eyes lit up, and then he nodded vehemently. “You’re right. Just enjoy it for what it is.”
“That’s right,” I said.
At that moment, a young man came riding in on a hoverboard. In age, he looked to be about halfway between Phoenix and me. He was tall, slender, and had striking blue eyes and black hair. He wore a black denim jacket and black skinny jeans and moved quickly.
“Hi,” he dismounted the hoverboard and held out his hand to us. “I’m Blake Sawyer.”
“Phoenix Irving,” Phoenix shook his hand.
“I’m Henry,” I said and shook Blake’s hand. “I’m Phoenix’s attorney.” I deliberately omitted my last name, because it was better for negotiations if he didn’t know we were related right off the top. Blake raised his eyebrows and shifted a bit. I guess having a lawyer present made him a little nervous.
“Well,” he said. “Welcome guys to Blue Light Productions. Let me show you back to my office.”
Phoenix and I followed Blake down a long hall to a large corner office. As big as the space was, it was still cluttered. An L-shaped desk took up most of the room, but it was covered with about half a dozen Mac screens. There were several whiteboards on the wall, all laid out with charts, and processes and checklists.
“Have a seat,” he said as he removed stacks of paper off the guest chairs. We sat, and then he leaned back in a leather chair. He toyed with a pen as he talked.
“Well, I’m so glad you guys could come out on such short notice,” he said. “Truly. We loved the movie. Loved. Loved. Loved.”
Hollywood bullshit. Phoenix nodded and rubbed his palms together nervously. I could tell from his face he was buying it all. Poor thing.
“We think you have a message,” he said. “Something that needs to be said and needs to be heard, and we think that you have the right eye for how to say it, in a way that captures the voice of a generation.”
“Thank you,” Phoenix said.
“So,” he said. “Here’s what we’re thinking. We’ve got a few scriptwriters on the project now.”
“Scriptwriters?” Phoenix asked.
“Yeah,” Blake said. “We want to take your message and create a hard hitting script.”
“Well, it’s supposed to be a documentary,” Phoenix said.
Blake shifted in his seat. “Yeah,” he said. “And we loved it. We loved your message, loved your research. And we want to take it and channel the narrative into a slightly different format.”
Phoenix nodded slowly and continued to listen. I listened but also continued to look over the e-mail document Phoenix had signed. It was a three page contract that guaranteed Blue Light exclusive rights for a six month negotiation period. It was pretty shoddy legal work, I noticed as I read through it.
I even caught a typo. I mean seriously, what lawyer doesn’t know how to spell ‘derivative,’? You don’t even have to know, all you have to do is right click on the squiggly red line on the computer screen.
Blake continued. “I mean, we loved everything about it, and we loved you in it. In fact, we want you to star in it.”
“Star?” Phoenix said. “There’s no star of a documentary.”
Blake smiled uncomfortably. “And as a documentary it’s great. It just needs some tweaking. I’m thinking Fast Food Nation. A full feature film, you’ll be the Wilmer Valderrama.”
Phoenix looked like he wanted to vomit. “I am not Fez.”
Blake laughed. “No, you’re not. You’ll be that edgy, cool, devil-may-care, kind of guy that our key demographic can relate to, especially you know, with your background.”
“Background?” Phoenix asked.
“Well, yeah,” Blake said. “The whole Sedona thing, we can play that up. It will make you seem like an expert. We can make Sedona cool again.”
“Again?” Phoenix asked, raising an eyebrow. “Was it ever not cool?”
Blake didn’t hear him. “We can generate buzz to get the hipsters out there, make it the happening scene again. I hear now that there’s a commune out there that’s got a kombucha factory that Earth Market is doing a distribution deal with. Maybe we’ll do a scene there, get an endorsement deal.”
I looked up when he said this.
“I don’t know,” Phoenix shook his head slowly. “I bet their lawyers are tough negotiators. Might be a hard sell.”
I had to keep myself from bursting out laughing.
“They’re a commune,” Blake grimaced. “I’m sure they don’t even have lawyers. You just go in a tent and smoke peyote or some shit like that, they’ll sign over anything you want. Anyway, you’ll be the face of legalization, and, you’ll have creative input.”
“Input?” Phoenix looked offended.
“Of course,” Blake said. “We want to tweak the idea a little, using your research of course, your creative input, and create a compelling story. One that people like you, and Jeremiah, and all the faces in your documentary, can relate to, can get on board with. I’m thinking Cannes. I’m thinking this could be a big, big project. I have a team of scriptwriters already working on the project. In fact--“
He reached into a desk drawer and pulled out a sheaf of papers and handed them to Phoenix. Phoenix took it with a shaking hand. I looked over his shoulder as he flipped through it.
“This is of course,” Blake said. “A very, very early draft of the first few scenes. But, it gives you an idea of of what we were thinking.”
From what I could tell, there were several sets of characters with varying story
lines representing the different spectrums of the drug war. There were a couple of sisters that were fleeing the cartels, some teenage American stoners, the drug czar and a couple of senators. There were only a few scenes written, but it appeared that the story lines were supposed to intersect at points.
I guessed Phoenix was supposed to play a spoiled suburban kid named Will. In the scene, he was with his friends Bob and George. Geez. Where did these names come from? I read on.
Enter Will, George and Bob into George’s bedroom. They throw their backpacks down and George pulls out a bong.
Bob: I’m so glad we got this primo bud from your dad’s stash.
George (laughs): He’s such a wastoid. He won’t even know.
George turns on a black light and turns off the bedroom light.
Bob: Look at the glow stars on your ceiling. They’re so cool.
George: No way. I think I might be trippin’.
Bob: You can’t trip on 420.
Will: No, he was doing those hallucinogens yesterday.
George: Cool. Let’s skip school again tomorrow. High school is for losers.
Bob: Word, yo. I’m not looking forward to that Lit test tomorrow. I mean, what does Fahrenheit 451 have to do with the real world? Who cares if books burn? No one reads anyway.
Will: I think that’s the point of the book.
Bob: That no one reads? That’s a stupid thing to write a book about. I’m skipping tomorrow. You in, Will?
Will: You guys go ahead. I can’t be skipping anymore, yo, because I was just awarded the Meritorious American Football Scholarship and accepted into Columbia for the upcoming fall semester.
Bob: You were always the smart one. Didn’t you get a 4.0 GPA?
Will: I have to with my dad always on my ass. He went to Harvard and he has high expectations for me. I think I disappointed him by only getting into Columbia. He has a double standard and doesn’t expect anything from my twin sister, Lucy.
George: Your dad was just elected mayor. Now what are you going to do about smoking?
Phoenix slammed the pages shut in disgust. “‘Primo bud?’ ‘Wastoid?’ ‘Yo?’ Literally no one talks like this. I have never heard anyone actually use the word, ‘yo.’ And glow stars on the ceiling? What are these, ten-year-old girls? This script totally sucks ass.”
