by Jeff Strand
“Yeah, I know. I have to focus on what’s right for the movie. But can we get rid of the part where they cut off that zombie’s head together using the same sword?”
“Would that change be right for the movie?”
Justin lowered his head. “No.”
“Don’t worry about it. Even the ugliest of directors have girlfriends. If we truly do make the greatest zombie movie ever, all three of us will have lines of women outside of our homes stretching for miles. We’ll go broke buying new shirts to replace the ones that get ripped off our bodies by our adoring fans.”
Justin grinned. “Then we should just go shirtless.”
“No, we’d get all scratched up.”
“The love story stays,” said Justin. “I’m sorry about that. I won’t have any more fits of jealousy.”
They went back to working on the screenplay.
And by the time Gabe and Bobby had to leave, the three of them agreed that the script sucked quite a bit less.
• • •
“My nephew says you’re looking for somebody to kill zombies for ya,” said Uncle Clyde, who made everybody call him Uncle Clyde, nephew or not. He inhaled from his e-cigarette and blew some vapor into the air.
“Movie zombies, yes,” said Justin.
“You didn’t need to clarify that, son,” said Uncle Clyde. He took a sip from his latte and grimaced. “Ugh. I can’t believe this is what passes for coffee these days. Disgusting. Why would anybody drink this?”
“You wanted to meet at a coffee shop.”
“Yeah, because if somebody is going to buy me coffee, it might as well be expensive. Doesn’t mean I like the taste.” He took another sip, swished it around in his mouth, and swallowed.
“Anyway,” said Justin, “Bobby and I are making a movie.”
Uncle Clyde stroked his gray beard, which was practically long enough to conceal a sasquatch. “The noblest of professions.”
“And like Bobby said, we need somebody to do the special effects.”
One of the baristas walked over to their table. “Excuse me, sir. You can’t smoke in here.”
“I’m not smoking. I’m vaping.”
“We don’t allow either.”
“There’s steam coming out of my coffee!”
“I understand, sir, but you’ll have to put it away.”
“Fine, fine.” Uncle Clyde tucked the e-cigarette back into his pocket and then looked over at Justin. “Do you smoke?”
“No, sir.”
“Good. Nasty habit. Turns your lungs into sacks of black tar. I’ve smoked since I was twelve, and every morning I wake up hacking and coughing up blobs of this thick, oozy stuff that I’m sure is mucus but doesn’t look like any mucus you’d find in nature.”
“What does it look like?” Justin asked.
“You don’t want to know, son. You don’t want to know.”
“Then why do you smoke?”
Uncle Clyde pointed to his face. “Do I look smart to you?”
Justin was unsure how to answer that and opted for the safety of silence.
“These days I vape. Comes in different flavors, every one of them vile. I’d get better flavor from chewing the armpits of a ninety-year-old baboon. And the nicotine addiction turns me into the kind of person who would snap at a coffee shop employee who’s just doing her job. Don’t smoke, Justin.”
“I won’t.”
“Back to the topic at hand. Lucky for you, I’m between jobs at the moment.”
“How far between?” Gabe inquired.
“Don’t sass your elders, kid.”
“That wasn’t meant to be a sass.”
“I am ready, willing, and available to work on your little movie, and I’ll make the best zombies you’ve ever seen. I’ll make zombies that’ll make the ones on The Walking Dead look like a child’s doll.”
A lot of children’s dolls were terrifying, but Justin didn’t point this out. He knew what Uncle Clyde meant.
“I’ve run the budget, and for materials and labor, I can give you the super-special friend-of-my-nephew discount price of forty-nine hundred dollars.”
Justin stared at him for a moment.
“Did Bobby tell you how much my grandmother gave me?”
“He might have. I don’t recall.”
“That’s almost our entire budget.”
“Okay, then if there’s some left over, I’ll throw in a fantastic Zombie Nose vs Apple Peeler effect.”
“No, I mean, we need to save some of our money for other stuff.”
Uncle Clyde took a sip of his coffee. “Ugh. This coffee is like dunking my tongue in a sewer rat’s bathwater. Listen, son. You’re trying to join the big leagues. Do you know what five grand will get you on a major production?”
“No, sir.”
He held up his pinkie finger. “One finger. One small finger, not your index finger or anything like that. On a union movie, I paint this finger gray, and that’s your five-thousand-dollar zombie effect. What you have to decide is if you’re trying to make a real movie or you’re goofing around with your buddies. Goofing around with your buddies is fine. I have fond memories of my buddies and me flinging firecrackers at seagulls. But call it what it is and don’t act like you’re trying to do something important.”
Justin wasn’t sure what to do. On one hand, Uncle Clyde was right. On the other hand, Uncle Clyde was a creepy, untrustworthy ex-con who would probably take the money and flee to another state.
“I won’t be able to commit to allocating that much of our budget to special effects until I discuss it with my partners,” said Justin. “I’ll send you a copy of our final script in a couple of days with the effects portions highlighted. You tell me what materials you’ll need, and we’ll do some pricing.”
“A real director wouldn’t need to rely on his crew to make decisions.”
“Technically the money part would be the producer’s job.”
“Don’t act like I don’t know the duties of the key filmmaking personnel. Do you know what a gaffer does? Do you?”
“He does the lighting.”
“Well, hello, Mr. Wikipedia. I guess you’re just a great big fountain of knowledge. I’ve got three other productions waiting on me for an answer, so if you’re just here to waste my time, I’m going to have to consider my other options.”
“Okay,” Justin said.
“You’re acting like you don’t believe me.”
“No, I believe you.”
Uncle Clyde stroked his beard, shaking out some loose crumbs and an olive. He took another sip of coffee. “Ugh. This tastes like unwashed dirt. All right, I’ll keep myself available for your cute little movie. I wouldn’t do this for just anyone, but I like my nephew. Compared to my other nephew, he’s pretty great. My other nephew, though…jeez. Bread changes color to help you know when it’s not okay to eat, but does he understand that? Nope. Kid eats moldy bread. Does the taste clue him in that he’s not doing the right thing? Nope. I once sat there and watched him eat seven slices of moldy bread. And he’s an honor student. I think he needs more attention from his parents. He’s sure not gonna get it from me.”
“Uh, thanks?” said Justin.
“I once saw Kevin eat a bunch of moldy bread too,” said Bobby. “It was pretty cool.”
• • •
“Your uncle is weird,” said Justin.
“Yeah,” Bobby said with great pride.
“I won’t lie and say that I don’t have reservations about blowing almost our entire budget on zombie effects,” said Gabe. “But the zombies are what it’s all about, right? If we can talk him down to forty-five hundred so that we’ve got money left to rent prop weapons, then we should reluctantly do it.”
“He won’t let us down,” said Bobby.
• • •
>
As they reviewed their latest rewrite of the script, Justin, Gabe, and Bobby were all thrilled to discover that it sucked even less.
They were not yet at the point where they were comfortable sharing their work with other human beings, but it was close enough that they could start putting together a tentative shooting schedule.
Midway through trying to figure out the schedule, which was about ten thousand times more complicated than they’d anticipated, they all despised one another, but they were friends again by the time they were done.
• • •
“My mom is letting me cut and dye my hair,” Alicia said over the phone. “So thank you. This really means a lot to me. Your movie is going to change my life.”
“You’re welcome,” Justin told her.
“I’m going to do it Friday night so it’s fresh.”
“Sounds great.”
“Okay, talk to you later.”
“Good-bye,” Justin said since he couldn’t think of a way to artificially lengthen the conversation. That was a skill he’d try to improve in the future.
• • •
Justin had to work on Thursday, so he scowled his way through an evening of manual labor while Mr. Pamm yelled at him. They needed to write a part in the script for Noisy Guy #1. As he worked, he revised scenes in his mind, trying to make the dialogue sparkle. He tried to occasionally sneak away so that he could write down some of his most clever ideas, but that was almost impossible with Mr. Pamm’s extrasensory perception for slackers. Many of his thoughts were lost forever. RIP.
When he got home, Justin’s body ached, but fortunately he didn’t ache too much to move a mouse around and click some buttons, so he reviewed the newest drafts that Gabe and Bobby had emailed to him.
They sucked even less than before and almost sucked enough less that they didn’t suck at all.
“We’re actually going to do this,” he said out loud.
“What was that?” Mom asked.
“Nothing. Just being creepy and talking to myself.”
“All right.”
Justin’s palms were sweating. The screenplay wasn’t perfect. It wasn’t even close to perfect. Parts of it were still kind of terrible, especially the part Bobby wrote about a zombie goldfish. But with some on-the-set ingenuity and contributions by their talented cast, Justin was positive that they could turn this film into something truly spectacular.
He gave copies of the script to Alicia and Christopher, informing them that some parts were awful on purpose so that if the screenplay was leaked, they could identify which version of the script had been leaked and thus trace it to the leaker.
They were going to start production very early Saturday morning. Mr. Pamm had given him the day off…angrily. Justin would rather start on Friday night, but they’d be working sixteen-hour days Saturday and Sunday, and he didn’t want to wear out his cast and crew. They probably didn’t have the same level of endurance that he did.
These were going to be long days. Undoubtedly something would occasionally go wrong. He was prepared for that. His cast had no film experience, so he knew that one of the actors would mess up a line every once in a while, and he couldn’t count on every single special effect working exactly as planned the first time. As good as Bobby was at holding up the boom mic, its shadow would get into the shot at some point, and Justin wouldn’t lose his temper. He’d simply inform everybody that they would be doing a second take.
He hadn’t quite figured out what to do about the school, but they wouldn’t be using that location the first weekend, so he still had time to work it out. He was confident that the problem would be resolved in a completely satisfactory and legal manner.
Justin was ready to face any challenge. Solve any problem.
Justin Hollow was ready for anything.
• • •
“What history test?”
“I texted you a reminder last night,” said Gabe.
“Didn’t we just have one?” Justin asked. “How much history is there for Mr. Dzeda to test us on?”
“Did you study at all?”
“I can’t do everything. Oh well, I guess I don’t get to be a famous historian now.”
“Don’t be sarcastic. If we called Steven Spielberg, he’d tell you that you should’ve studied for the test.”
He was right. Spielberg would be polite but firm. Justin needed to maintain his focus on academics, or the only movie he’d be making would be a documentary about living in a cardboard box in an alley, scavenging half-eaten lizards for his dinner, and burning his hair to stay warm.
“You’ve got to take this seriously,” Gabe insisted.
“I am. I’m joking on the outside, but on the inside I’m throwing up.”
“Um, throwing up, by definition, happens on the outside.”
“When the movie is done, I promise that I’ll think about that comment, and we’ll both have a big laugh about how amusing it was. For now it’s maybe not the best time to be correcting my puke comment.”
“I wasn’t trying to be amusing, but I get your point. If we hurry, you can cram in a few minutes of studying before he hands out the tests.”
• • •
In the long, proud tradition of pretending that certain events in history never took place, Justin decided to pretend that the history test never happened.
13
“I have a title,” Bobby said at lunch. “Dead Skull.”
“That’s perfect,” Justin said. “The instant we make a movie about a dead skull, that’s the title we’re going to use.”
“I knew you were going to make fun of me,” said Bobby. “That’s why I made this poster to explain the concept.”
He held up a sheet of paper. It was a drawing of the outside of the school with the title Dead School on the wall. The word School was then crossed out with spray paint and replaced with Skull.
“Dead Skull,” said Bobby.
Gabe thought about it for a moment. “My mind says, ‘No, that’s dumb,’ but my heart says yes.”
“My heart says yes too,” said Justin. “Dead Skull it is.”
“For now,” said Gabe.
“Right. For now.”
“Because I’d like to believe that we’ll come up with something better while acknowledging that so far we haven’t.”
“And if you say it really fast, it kind of sounds like Dead’s Cool,” said Bobby.
“Dead Skull, Dead Skull, Dead Skull…no, it sounds like Dead’s Cull, which I guess could be like the culling of the grim reaper or something. Dead’s Cool isn’t a bad title actually, though I don’t like it as much as Dead Skull.”
“What about Dead Is Cool without the contraction?” asked Gabe.
“I’m not sure our movie has any evidence that being dead is cool,” said Justin. “Killing zombies is cool, yeah, but being dead is kind of a miserable existence. You’re all rotted and stuff, and people are always trying to shoot you in the head.”
“Fair enough.”
“Thanks, Bobby!”
• • •
The night before he was to shoot his first feature film, Justin stood in his kitchen, making peanut butter sandwiches.
He was not a great chef by any stretch of the imagination. (He could make mushy macaroni and cheese or crunchy macaroni and cheese but nothing in between.) But a peanut butter sandwich did not exceed his skill level. The challenge was maximizing the number of sandwiches he could get out of his available peanut butter without being stingy to the point where somebody said, “Hey, there’s insufficient peanut butter on this sandwich!”
He had dozens of small bags of assorted chips and a cooler full of bottled water, which were technically just bottles he’d refilled from the faucet.
And Mom had made cookies. Lots and lots and lots and lots of cookies. Cookies
of almost every variety imaginable, except for peanut butter for obvious reasons. They had so many that by the end of the shoot, every member of the cast and crew would instantly become physically ill from the mere sight of a cookie. But it was a small price to pay for their art, and until that moment was reached, nobody would go hungry.
Though he had approximately 2,164,798 things to do before production began tomorrow, Justin was determined to get a good night’s sleep. He could sleepwalk his way through the rest of his life (apparently) but not the first day of shooting. He had to be alert. You didn’t hear famous filmmakers saying that their movies fell short of being masterpieces because they’d been sleepy.
He brushed his teeth, washed his face, brushed his teeth again because he was so tired that he’d forgotten he brushed them the first time, and then climbed into bed.
He fell asleep immediately, and if he did dream of ferocious zombies dragging him down into a dark pit, he didn’t remember it when he woke up.
• • •
Justin woke up exactly one minute before his alarm went off at 5:00 a.m. As far as he could remember, that had never happened in his entire life. Usually his brain was good at plunging into the deepest possible sleep when the buzzer sounded.
He got out of bed and took a shower. He put on a pair of jeans and his favorite Night of the Living Dead shirt. (He had four.) Then he looked at himself in the mirror. Wow. He was having a good hair day. It didn’t matter since he’d be wearing a baseball cap, but it was still a good omen.
He whistled his favorite song, “The Gonk,” as he put on his socks and shoes. This surprised him because he’d never been able to whistle before. He hoped he wasn’t still dreaming.
He poured himself a bowl of Extreme Sugar Flakes, drowned it in milk, and took a bite. Extreme Sugar Flakes had never tasted so good. In fact, milk had never tasted so good, and it hadn’t even had time to absorb the natural flavor of the cereal.
This was shaping up to be the most perfect day ever.
He should play the lottery.
No, he didn’t have time. And he was a minor.
Still, all signs were pointing to this being the best day of his life. Nothing could spoil it. Nothing! He didn’t even care that by constantly thinking about how awesome everything was, he was tempting the forces of irony. Whoever was in charge of irony didn’t scare him. This was going to be amazing.
