Acid Song

by Bernard Beckett

  ‘You here to pitch an idea?’ the barmaid asked.

  ‘Got that desperate look about me, have I?’

  ‘I’ve seen worse,’ she smiled. ‘The guy before you went to the toilet three times.’

  ‘You ever dream of a job where you don’t spend your time counting how many times people go to the toilet?’

  ‘Dreaming’s the easy part.’

  ‘Ain’t that the truth.’

  A stranger not called Jonathon stumbled down the stairs with the tripping gait of a man convicted. The barmaid raised a quizzical brow. He shook his head and headed for the door. Simon fancied he saw a tear forming at the corner of his eye.

  ‘That was him,’ the barmaid said.

  ‘Figured.’

  ‘Simon is it?’ A woman materialised beside him. Same height as Jonathon. Same preference for high-necked tops, forcing her chin up and out, in the manner of the private school refugee.

  ‘That’s me,’ Simon admitted, shaking her hand with too much enthusiasm.

  ‘Linda. Well then, follow me.’

  ‘Good luck,’ the barmaid whispered.

  ‘I bet you say that to all the boys.’ Simon was lifted by her smile. Why couldn’t she be the one deciding?

  The room was fashionably stark. Many years ago it had been an upstairs bedroom in a city cottage. People had lain sick here, woken abruptly, stumbled out for a midnight piss, held one another close. Now the self-important held court, sipped carefully from their glasses, admired the integrity of the bare wooden floorboards. The table was made of recycled native timber. An authentic fireplace stood cleared and impotent.

  Jonathon sat at the head of the table, flicking through Simon’s proposal, his back to the one small window so that Simon would have to squint when he looked at him. Simon remained standing, uncertain which place was his. Linda squeezed past and sat before her own pile of papers: appointment times, scribbled notes, a daunting pile of submissions.

  ‘Anywhere’s fine.’ She motioned at the two spare seats. Simon settled into the first of them.

  ‘Nervous?’ Jonathon asked. His accent was forced. Simon imagined it being polished on a gap year spent beating fear and respect into a litter of boarding school unfortunates.

  ‘A little,’ Simon admitted.

  ‘Don’t be,’ Jonathon sighed, as if the thought of the nervous was too boring to contemplate. Simon imagined standing now and punching him full in the face, just for the fun of it. Tonight, in his dreams, he would.

  ‘Now, you’re new to this process, is that right?’

  New. Naïve. Inept. Unconnected.

  Simon nodded his guilt.

  ‘Okay. Well then, perhaps Linda, you would like to briefly take Simon through what will be happening, and then we can get down to the nitty gritty?’

  ‘You don’t hear that so often,’ Simon said, unable to help himself.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nitty gritty.’

  ‘Don’t you?’ Jonathon’s hair was just long enough to be foppish and his eyelashes were improbably lush. Somewhere out there a drum machine was missing its vocalist.

  ‘Okay then,’ Linda took over. ‘Well, as you know, the Film Commission primarily uses a model that funds producers rather than writers or directors. Most of our money goes in direct response to an approach from an established producer, so for a person like you, the normal first step would be to find a way of getting a producer to take notice, perhaps through a short film, something like that.’

  Simon nodded. This he knew. It was all laid out clearly on the website. He could read.

  ‘But, this year, we’re also trialling a different developmental process, where we’re scouting for the best ideas that might just be out there, really, and then looking to see if we can help put together the whole package: finding a producer, helping set up a fund structure for the movie. We do have a funding cap on this process, which is three million per annum, but because we’re looking at developing specifically low budget digital projects, we don’t necessarily have a numerical limit on films in mind. If three good ideas present in a year, we’re prepared to back all of them.’

  ‘At the moment,’ Jonathon added, ‘we’ve culled the website submissions down to twenty possibilities, and we’re travelling the country listening to pitches for those. And you’re one of them, of course. So, questions?’

  Simon tried to think of a question. The game was as simple as it was ugly. If he could make them like him, they might just like his idea. And they would like him if he made them feel important. Perhaps at film school there were courses in this.

  ‘Um, no, no that’s outlined things pretty well I think,’ Simon answered.

  ‘Good. Well then, down to the …’ Jonathon paused to let the nitty gritty pass by unannounced ‘…business then. I’m sure you’re busy too.’

  ‘Not really,’ Simon assured them. ‘I have a fairly flexible lifestyle.’

  ‘Okay, well our next appointment is in forty-five minutes,’ Jonathon told him, ‘so…’

  ‘Down to the nitty gritty.’

  ‘Indeed.’

  Out of the corner of his eye Simon thought he caught Linda smiling. His only hope.

  ‘One sentence or less,’ Jonathon said. ‘What’s your film about?’

  ‘Identity,’ Simon replied.

  ‘Okay, and what do you mean by that?’

  ‘In less than a sentence?’

  ‘No, take longer if you need.’

  So why ask for a sentence in the first place then, Simon wanted to ask. And Jonathon knew he wanted to ask it. He had started badly.

  ‘Okay. Well, by identity I mean, who are we? And I should say more, I suppose, so I mean, to what extent do we become the only person we allow ourselves to become? As life progresses, do we paint ourselves into a corner, so that the only moves we face are forced upon us, to mix my metaphors? Does this set our identity? And if that’s the case, what choices do we face? What would it take to get out of the corner? We all feel as if there are decisions which could change our lives, one way or the other, but how much power do we have, to make those decisions? That’s the sort of philosophical take on the film, anyway.’

  ‘Okay, good, sounds interesting to me,’ Linda said. Jonathon offered nothing.

  ‘And who is the film about then?’ Jonathon asked. ‘Who is the protagonist?’

  Is this why I have so few male friends? Simon wondered.

  ‘It’s about Joe, and it’s about Jo.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘A man and a woman. Joe and Jo.’

  ‘Oh. So which one’s it about?’

  ‘Both.’

  ‘It helps if we can narrow it down to a single interest. Who do we most care about?’ Jonathon spoke slowly, in the manner of a primary school teacher.

  ‘I care most about Jo,’ Simon told him, pausing before adding, ‘the woman.’

  ‘Okay, so she’s the protagonist,’ Jonathon announced, as if this was a matter only he could have cleared up.

  ‘Right, glad to hear it,’ Simon said. Again he was sure Linda smirked.

  ‘All right, so we have this Jo. It’s a joke right, them both having the same name?’

  ‘A comment anyway.’

  ‘On what?’ Jonathon asked.

  ‘On the fact that they’re dopplegängers. You know, two people who …’

  ‘I know what a dopplegänger is,’ Jonathon told him.

  ‘Yes, and I know what a protagonist is,’ Simon replied. The whole thing had the distinct whiff of a stand-off in the playground. Amanda would kill him if she could see this.

  ‘All right, so give me your protagonist’s character arc then. What’s her journey?’

  ‘Just briefly?’

  ‘As briefly as possible.’

  ‘Jo – shall I call her Jolene for now, to make it easier? – Jolene begins the film as a character that struggles to make connections. She drifts. She finds it hard to steer a direction through life, she’s a little unconvinced by her own exi
stence. Through meeting Joe, a man with a different manifestation of the same secret, she sees the opportunity to take a chance, and wrest back control of her destiny.’

  ‘Sounds rather intellectual,’ Jonathon told him.

  ‘That’s the intellectual rendering of it,’ Simon countered. ‘The actual incident is rather more everyday.’

  ‘Let’s do that then,’ Linda suggested. ‘How about you take us through the incidents.’

  ‘Sure,’ Simon smiled. This was his rule. He would smile at her and not at him.

  ‘Act at a time,’ Jonathon demanded. ‘You’re familiar with the three act structure I take it?’

  ‘Well yes, I am,’ Simon told him. ‘Although I haven’t really used it.’

  ‘Why not?’ Jonathon looked as if he was preparing to spit.

  ‘It’s not that sort of a story.’

  ‘The sort of story that works on film, you mean?’

  ‘Well no, obviously that isn’t what I mean.’

  ‘Look, I don’t mean to sound patronising, but have you even been to any workshops on this?’

  ‘Kissing arse?’

  ‘Getting a film made.’

  ‘I was using the dysphemism. That’s an offensive term used to …’

  ‘Boys …’ Linda’s raised hand cut them both off. Jonathon responded by raising his eyebrows and leaning back on his chair, waving Simon away with a flourish of fingers.

  ‘Sorry. It’s just a little unusual, that’s all, a story without acts.’

  ‘Simon, how about you just take us through the major incidents?’

  Simon paused, embarrassed at having behaved so childishly. Yet he knew he was ready to rise again in an instant. He tried to clear his head. This was the hard part. The important part. To take the story that for three years had carried the weight of his dreams and turn it into this: brief words for an audience so heavily invested in remaining unimpressed. The crushing part. The scene where he fails.

  ‘Start with the inciting incident,’ Jonathon suggested, misreading the pause and breaking Simon’s train of thought.

  ‘It sounds like a tautology doesn’t it?’ Simon replied, in place of clearing his throat. ‘All right, my inciting incident is simple. Jo, Jolene, arrives by a small boat at a jetty in the Marlborough Sounds. She has bags with her. She is down for the weekend, has booked a bach. The inciting incident is her discovery that the bach is already very much occupied by Joe, who has been there for some weeks, and claims to have block booked the place for the next month as well. Problem is there’s no phone, no cell coverage, and the boat isn’t due to return for another three days.’

  ‘Yes. Okay. And that’s the first act then?’ Jonathon frowned down into his papers. ‘I mean, that’s where the first part of the film takes place? Inside this bach.’

  ‘It’s where the whole film takes place. That’s what I mean, when I say it isn’t a three act structure.’

  ‘So we spend an hour and a half in a small bach?’

  ‘There’s a row boat. And they go out for a swim, later on. That’s what I’m calling it. Swim.’

  ‘And explain why we’d want to sit through that.’

  ‘Okay. Jolene is sure Joe is lying about his booking. He claims to be down here working on his Ph.D. dissertation, but there’s something about him that doesn’t ring true. Meanwhile, for his part, Joe doesn’t trust Jolene. She’s nervous, evasive. We as an audience don’t know anything about either’s background, and so become intrigued to find which of them is lying, and why. That’s the mystery element. And meanwhile there’s a chemistry between them, which they’re both resisting. Not an obvious chemistry, but a possibility, dampened by mistrust.’

  ‘A little like Before Sunrise,’ Linda suggested.

  ‘A little. But here they are both hiding something. They both have a secret, and as their back stories are revealed piece by piece we more want them to get together, and more see how impossible this is. We also see that they are both running away from the same problem, and that neither understands how to deal with it.’

  ‘So what are the secrets?’ Jonathon asked, and there was just the smallest glimmer of interest in his eyes. This question was inevitable, and Simon had decided in advance how it would be answered. Now, facing them both, seeing that for them this is what it all hinged upon, he almost lost his nerve. But he knew promises made through time, from old self to new, must be kept, or the illusion of self fails.

  ‘I can’t tell you.’

  ‘What do you mean you can’t tell us?’

  ‘If you want to know you have to read the whole screenplay.’

  The silence lasted only a beat, but long enough to show that neither had been expecting this. Jonathon was the first to splutter his disbelief.

  ‘Are you seriously suggesting that unless we let you through to the next round, you’re not prepared to show us why we should let you through to the next round?’

  ‘That’s exactly what I’m suggesting,’ Simon replied, although he felt none of the certainty he had hoped for. Clearly this was insane, and in the years to come he would regret this moment, and the moment when the promise had been made. ‘That’s the power of mystery.’

  ‘It’s nuts,’ Jonathon punctuated the judgement with a solid clearing of his throat, as if attempting to clear his distaste for the project.

  ‘I think I’d like to read it,’ Linda said. A look of undisguised disgust clouded Jonathon’s pretty face. There was history between these two and it was Simon’s good fortune to have arrived in the aftermath. He was being offered shelter amongst the debris.

  ‘Really?’ Simon asked.

  ‘Sure. You have the whole screenplay there?’

  ‘Yeah, of course.’ Simon fumbled it from bag to desk, and pushed it eagerly across the table, as if once past halfway it could not be given back.

  The silence was surly, filled with conversations-to-come, between a man and a woman who had not yet agreed upon their places.

  ‘This doesn’t mean we’re accepting the idea of course,’ Jonathon warned. ‘We’ll be asking to read a selection.’

  ‘But I’m through to the next stage?’

  ‘Apparently,’ he admitted.

  ‘We’ll call you,’ Linda added. ‘Some time in the next eight weeks. Congratulations.’

  Linda rose and shook his hand. Simon skipped down the stairs.

  ‘How was that?’ asked the barmaid.

  ‘Better than I expected.’

  ‘Full bladder, you see. It makes all the difference.’

  PADDY WAS AN old friend. Amanda had him to thank for introducing her to Simon five years before. It was during Paddy’s first entry in the 48 Hour Film Festival, where teams of hopefuls bravely attempted to squeeze their vast ambitions through the window-trap of a sleep-free weekend. Amanda was fresh out of a journalism course and had just blown the last of her loan money on a MiniDV camera, state of the art then, now drawing only a trickle of interest on TradeMe. Camera ownership promoted Amanda to ‘director of filming’ (Paddy was ‘director’ which meant he got to hand out the titles) while Simon was a friend of Paddy’s from the theatre and film course up at the university: ‘Really funny, he’s already written most of his first screenplay, he’ll be excellent for the script, fucken lucky to be working with him.’

  Simon’s advertised hilariousness was in fact a delicate flower: reluctant to bloom and easily damaged. The ‘legendary editor’ Paddy had found was unfamiliar with their software and the lead actress, doubling as the carefully cultivated object of Simon’s affection, refused to utter what Simon considered to be one of the best lines he had ever written, so murdering the nascent relationship.

  The film was submitted incomplete and the public showing three days later was excruciating. Simon and Amanda drowned their sorrows together, and one thing led to a lover. It was another year before Paddy, in an alcohol-assisted spurt of self-pity, revealed he had only invited Amanda on to the project because he ‘had feelings for’ her (how quickly the cam
era was forgotten).

  These days Paddy worked at the Film Archive. He wore a lot of black and had discarded his contact lenses in favour of glasses. He had recently taken up smoking. His was the indomitable sort of optimism that allowed him to believe that if only he could get these few details right, the rest would surely fall into place. Amanda didn’t see so much of him any more, but he was always friendly, and good for a favour. Eager to help. He waved at her from behind the counter and ran around to release the door.

  ‘I’ve found the tape,’ he informed her, bursting with pride. ‘It’s easy enough, if you know where to look. Karl was meant to be doing the cataloguing of the news footage, but he turned out to be full of shit, so Grant’s had me doing it on weekends.’

  Paddy turned and led the way through to the viewing room, the spring in his step immediately unsettling. Amanda remembered how vulnerable he was to suggestion. He had started to put on weight: a little bulge of fat had made itself comfortable above the waistline and was settling in for the journey.

  ‘You want to wear headphones? Or we can just listen through the sound system if you like. I was going to set it up in the theatre, but Karl’s screwed the projector again. I could probably fix it though, if you want to wait, have a drink…’

  She shook her head and sat in front of the small screen. Paddy hovered at her shoulder. She felt his eyes pass quickly over her breasts, like a draught skimming through the room.

  ‘Headphones would be good.’

  Paddy handed them to her, his fingers brushing hers. Five years had passed. How could it be that in his head the same nostalgic reel was still playing? He sat down beside her and stared expectantly at the screen.

  ‘You want to get another pair of headphones?’ she asked him, before he could suggest sharing.

  ‘No, it’s all right. I’ve already seen it.’