Hollywood Hack Job

by Nathan Allen

  “Sure, no problem. You don’t happen to know any inbred cannibals we can hang out with for a couple of weeks so we can study their ways, do you?”

  “It doesn’t have to be quite that literal, Eric. Maybe we can find some other way of getting inside the mind of a killer.”

  “So what are you suggesting? We should go to the library and read up on serial killers or something?”

  Cameron shook his head. “We have to go beyond that. You can’t get inside another person’s head by reading about them in a book. We have a duty to our audience to become method writers. We need to dive head-first into the subject matter.”

  Eric made a face like he had swallowed something bitter. “I don’t know. Is that something we really want to do?”

  Cameron took a large gulp of his coffee, then forcefully placed the empty cup down on the table. “Look. We have to face up to the fact that we’re not the best writers out there. We’re good. We’re very good, even. But we’re not the greatest. Not even close. So we have to take it further to reach our full potential. We have to do the kinds of things no one else would ever think to do. Go to places everyone else is unwilling to venture. That’s what you do if you want to produce great works of art.”

  Eric stared into his drink for a long time. None of this really appealed to him. The prospect of swimming inside the murky mind of a depraved killer wasn’t something he really wanted to contemplate. But the way Cameron put it to him, he made it sound perfectly logical.

  “Okay,” Eric said. “I’m in. Whatever it takes, I’ll do it.”

  Chapter 18

  All Eric wanted to do when he arrived home late Tuesday evening was sink into his comfortable recliner in front of their seventy-five inch Sony Bravia 4K Ultra Smart TV and unwind with a stiff drink in his hand. He had just spent the day suffering through another pointless meeting with another clueless studio claiming to show an interest in finally putting Rodney Luther King into production. But it ended up going exactly the same as every other meeting he had ever taken. They never went anywhere, since none of these knuckleheads could wrap their feeble minds around such an original and daring concept. So he was forced to sit there for five hours, listening to the same inane questions and comments that every other studio executive had thrown at him over the past two years. “Could you make it a comedy?” one of the executives asked him. “Films about race don’t test well with women over forty,” another claimed, before adding that it would be difficult to sell a film like this to the emerging Chinese market. The head of the studio, a former Burger King CEO, told him they were unlikely to greenlight any film with such limited merchandising opportunities.

  Eric had to excuse himself midway through, then locked himself inside an empty room and waited until he had calmed down. Surrounded by so many philistines intent on destroying his masterwork, he was at serious risk of opening up one of the windows and swan-diving thirty stories to the pavement below.

  Once again, he found himself questioning his chosen career path and wondering whether all this pain and suffering was ultimately worth it. When he wasn’t being told by a bunch of imbeciles that his magnum opus was unfilmable in its current form, he had the director of Pearl Harbor telling him he couldn’t even churn out a simple horror script. The thought crossed his mind, not for the first time, that it might be time to admit defeat and move on with his life. Hollywood and Eric Haas didn’t appear to be such a good fit. Maybe he would be better off turning Rodney Luther King into a stage play, or perhaps remove the musical element altogether and expand it into a novel. That would be preferable to handing it over to these vision-deprived bean counters and allow them to completely dilute the central message.

  He closed the door, then kicked off his shoes and loosened his tie. Less than a minute later, the insufferable thumping from next door began. Eric cringed. This was all he needed right now. It was the fourth time in the past week his neighbor had started drumming immediately after he arrived home. That couldn’t be just a coincidence; he had to be doing it on purpose. He probably spent his whole day watching through his front window, waiting for Eric to appear, knowing that it was driving him insane. If he knew this was going to happen just because he’d made a simple request to keep the noise down, he never would have gone over there in the first place.

  He had only just sat down and flicked on the TV when he heard Cameron’s voice. “Eric? Is that you?”

  Eric looked around. He didn’t even realize Cameron was home. “Yeah? Where are you?”

  “I’m down here. In the basement.”

  “What are you doing in the basement?”

  “Come and have a look. There’s something I want to show you.”

  Eric reluctantly got back on his feet and walked over to the basement door.

  In the three years he and Cameron had lived in the house they had only ever set foot in the basement once, shortly after they first moved in. It was dark and musty and filled with cobwebs, and smelled of stale potatoes and urine. Water leaked in when it rained, causing the wood to rot. Their skin crawled just by being in there. They decided to forgo the extra storage space and declare that area of the house off-limits.

  The first thing he noticed when he made his way down the steps was the plastic. Sheets and sheets of clear plastic, covering the floor and every surface. The second thing he noticed was the smell – or the lack of smell. Gone was the scent of stale potatoes and urine, and in its place a faint antiseptic odor of chlorine and disinfectant.

  In the middle of this all stood Cameron. He wore a disposable orange protective suit, the type sanitation workers used when dealing with putrid material, and a pair of safety goggles.

  “So you’ve finally decided to clean this place out?” Eric said, both impressed and amused. “When did you do all this?”

  “It’s something I’ve been working on these past few days. When you were busy with all your meetings.”

  Eric couldn’t help but smile. “Cameron, I know you can be the world’s biggest procrastinator, but even for you this is going to extreme lengths to avoid–”

  He stopped mid-stride when he saw that they were not alone. The smile vanished from his face.

  In the corner of the room was a pale, heavyset fifty-something man with a walrus mustache. His hands and feet were in shackles, chained to the wall behind him. His mouth was sealed shut with a strip of tape. His face was drooped, like all the muscles had given up trying to function. His eyelids hung heavy over his eyes.

  To his right, laid out neatly on the workbench, was every sharp knife from Cameron and Eric’s kitchen.

  It took a moment for Eric’s brain to process just what his eyes were seeing. He blinked several times to make sure this wasn’t some hallucination brought on by an excessive amount of stress and Eli Roth films.

  The full horror of the scene finally registered, and he beat a hasty retreat back up the stairs.

  “Eric, wait.”

  Cameron raced to catch up with him. He put his hand on Eric’s shoulder. Eric spun around.

  “Look, Cameron, I’m sure there’s a very good reason why you have a complete stranger chained up in our basement,” he said. “But right now I’m struggling to think of one.”

  “Promise me you won’t freak out,” Cameron said.

  “I will not promise that,” Eric said, his voice rising.

  “Okay, calm down. Let me explain.”

  “What are you doing? Who the hell is that down there?”

  “Don’t worry, I’ve got it all planned out. We’re safe. No one knows he’s here. His name is Robert Maxwell Faulkner. He’s on trial for murder, and he’s going to help us.”

  “Help us? How, exactly?”

  “He can help us do what we discussed,” Cameron said, speaking in a low half-whisper. “You know, last week? At Starbucks?”

  Eric’s face was blank. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Remember what we said about gaining first-hand experience? Well, we now have
an opportunity to do just that.”

  Silence.

  “You’re suggesting that we use this guy, we make him one of our victims,” Eric said, speaking slowly and clearly to avoid any further misunderstandings. “So we can draw from the experience to improve our writing?”

  Cameron nodded. “That’s exactly what I’m suggesting.”

  “Right.” Eric didn’t speak for a long time. “That is not what I thought you talking about in Starbucks last week.”

  “What did you think I was talking about?”

  “I don’t know ... I thought you meant we should speak with some experts in the field. Like a homicide detective, or a criminal psychologist. Or that maybe we should interview a prisoner who has been convicted of those sorts of crimes. It honestly, never in a million years crossed my mind that you meant we should literally do it ourselves.”

  Cameron took a moment to consider this. “Okay, now I understand why you reacted the way you did when you saw all this. That makes sense. But you know why we have to do it this way, don’t you?”

  “?!?!?!” Eric said.

  “If we did it the way you suggested, with research and interviews and whatnot, we would only experience it third-hand. At best. The details, the true minutiae of the act of killing, it would all be lost. We need to live the experience ourselves.”

  “No.” Eric shook his head back and forth. “This is insane. You are insane.”

  “Yeah, well, most geniuses are a bit crazy, aren’t they?” Cameron said, trying but failing to suppress a sly grin.

  “No, most geniuses are slightly eccentric. This is the wrong side of crazy. The sanity train has well and truly left the station.”

  “Give me one good reason why we shouldn’t do this.”

  Eric coughed out a stunned laugh. “Are you serious?”

  “I am. Just one reason.”

  “Well ... for a start, there’s a legal process that needs to be followed. You can’t grab anyone you like off the street and dish out your own form of vigilante justice. You don’t even know for sure if this guy’s guilty of what he’s accused of.”

  “I do know that, because he’s already confessed. He’s going to plead guilty as part of some deal. He was a drunk who beat his wife to death in a jealous rage after subjecting her to years of abuse. Trust me, if anyone deserves to die it’s this guy. We’ll actually be saving the state millions of dollars in legal fees and prison expenses.”

  A low groan seeped out from the basement. The tranquilizer pills Cameron had fed his captive were wearing off, and he was slowly reemerging from his unconscious slumber.

  “Uh-uh,” Eric said. “There’s no way you can ever convince me this is anything but a bad idea.” He headed for the kitchen and threw open every one of the cupboards, desperately searching for something with a high alcoholic content. “I’m willing to do just about anything to get this screenplay finished, but I have to draw the line somewhere.”

  “So you’re not prepared to do what it takes?”

  “I said I’d do anything if I thought it would help. You don’t really believe this will make us better writers, do you?”

  “If we want our screenplay to be the best it can be, and if we want to strive for a level of authenticity and realism no other writers out there could possibly come close to, yes, I do believe that.”

  “I’m fairly certain no one has ever murdered someone else to improve their craft.”

  “Exactly! We’re breaking new ground here. We will have taken method writing to levels no one else has ever dreamed of. We will be to screenwriting what Daniel Day Lewis is to acting. No, scratch that. We’ll be beyond Daniel Day Lewis. He’ll look like a fraud by comparison.”

  Eric uncovered a bottle of gin with a tiny amount remaining. He quickly gulped it down. “I’m really not comfortable with any of this,” he said. He grimaced as the alcohol burned its way down his throat.

  “I’m not all that comfortable with it either, but that’s why we have to do it. We’ve been stuck in our comfort zone for far too long. We need to push ourselves out of it. Remember what we agreed on the other day, about how for this script to be exceptional it needs a memorable villain? Well, this is what we have to do if we want to create the ultimate monster. We have to step into his shoes and view the world through his eyes. We need to become that monster.”

  Eric’s head dropped. He knew exactly what Cameron was trying to do here. He was wearing him down, little by little, like he always did. He knew no matter how many times he said no to something, Cameron would keep going on and on about it until he finally surrendered.

  He tipped the gin bottle upside down and shook out the last few drops.

  “Let me ask you something,” Cameron continued. “Have you heard of a guy by the name of Leo Tolstoy?”

  “Yes, of course I know who Leo Tolstoy is,” Eric said.

  “Right. And what about Nicholas Tolstoy? Ever heard of him?”

  Eric said that he hadn’t.

  “Nicholas Tolstoy was Leo’s older brother, and some say he was every bit as talented as Leo. Imagine that – two brilliant writers from the one family. So why do you think Leo Tolstoy is remembered for producing some of history’s greatest pieces of literature, while Nicholas is nothing but a footnote?”

  Eric spied a bottle of cooking sherry in the far corner of the cupboard. “I really have no idea,” he said.

  “Tolstoy said it was because his brother didn’t have the same drive to succeed that he had. He may have had the raw talent, and he may have been born with the same opportunities, but he lacked that burning desire to take it further and become one of the all-time greats. Tolstoy called it the ‘necessary bad qualities.’”

  “Necessary bad qualities?” Eric unscrewed the lid and swallowed a mouthful of the sherry. He soon regretted it. “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “Basically he was saying that if you want to be successful, if you want to rise above the competition and achieve greatness, you have to be prepared to push yourself further than anyone else. Do things no one else will do. Venture into places no one else is willing to go.”

  “And you’re saying we can only do that by murdering someone?”

  Cameron let out a long sigh. “You don’t seem to get it. Nobody ever becomes successful by being a nice guy. You have to be completely and utterly ruthless. You have to tap into the absolute worst parts of your psyche. It’s not a question of talent. It’s a question of how much you want it. That’s why sociopaths often flourish and become CEOs and presidents. They don’t have the burden of a conscience holding them back.”

  Eric collapsed onto the sofa and buried his face in his hands. After the kind of day he’d endured, he just wanted to relax and forget about his troubles for a while. This was the last thing he felt like dealing with.

  Cameron sat down beside him. Neither one spoke for a moment.

  The drumming from across the fence changed tempo, ramping up to a frantic speed metal beat.

  “I know this is confronting,” Cameron said. His voice was gentler now. “And I know it’s not something either one of us really wants to contemplate. But you understand this is our last chance, right? If we fail on this draft, it’s all over for us. I don’t just mean with Wrong Turn. I mean with everything, our whole Hollywood adventure. It’s over. We can kiss our careers goodbye and look forward to a life of regular nine-to-five jobs. And I don’t know how confident you are about finding meaningful employment, but we’re both about to turn thirty. We have BAs in creative writing and basically zero real work experience. We screw this up, by the end of the year we’ll be asking morbidly obese guys in Hawaiian shirts if they want fries with their happy meals. Or writing for Buzzfeed.”

  Eric didn’t say anything in response. But he didn’t leave or voice his objection in any way, either. He just had a look of resignation on his face. Once again, Cameron was able to wear him down and talk him into doing something he didn’t want to do. He hated how easily he could be manipulated. I
t was his worst character flaw.

  But in some weird way, he could see his point. They had spent their whole lives getting to where they were now. They just needed to take that final step. If they didn’t, all their years of hard work would be for nothing. It would be like running a marathon and giving up with the finish line in sight. Slaughtering another human being to further their writing careers was something unpleasant they would just have to do. Otherwise he was at serious risk of ending up like their idiot neighbor, still chasing some futile pipe dream well into middle-age.

  “Come on,” Cameron said. “Let’s get this over with.” He retrieved another orange protective suit from a drawer and tossed it into Eric’s lap. “Like everything else in life, I’m sure the first time will be the hardest.”

  Chapter 19

  “The script is coming along,” Michael Bay said, as a waiter from his favorite Pico Boulevard Chinese restaurant placed a serving of Kung Pao chicken in front of him. “There were a few minor issues to begin with, but we’re working to resolve those. I have faith that Cameron and Eric will deliver a brilliant piece of writing in the end.”

  “Let’s hope so,” said Martin Krauth, sitting opposite. Martin was the head of Paramount Pictures, a one-time B-movie lackey who had shot up through the ranks to become the company’s superstar CEO and chairman in record time. Along with Michael, he was responsible for orchestrating the entire series of films in the Platinum Dunes Cinematic Universe. “We don’t want a late script holding up production. We’ve already started the casting process. Bella Thorne’s agent has been calling me non-stop for the past two weeks. Apparently she’s dying to play the lead.”

  “Bella Thorne?” Michael struggled to pick up a piece of chicken with his chopsticks. “I thought Hailee Steinfeld was our first choice?”

  “Hailee’s a fine actress, but I feel Bella can bring something more to the role. Seventeen million more, to be precise.”