The Smoking Gun

by Doug Richardson

  “I like ’em both.”

  “But who’d you rather fuck?” pressed The Boss.

  “Hard time relating to that question.”

  “It’s not a gay thing,” said The Veep.

  “I know what it is,” I said. “Just don’t feel strongly one way or the other. Law’s the better actor. Aside from that, you want me to call my wife and have her weigh in?”

  “Unless she’s still in high school she’s not our demo,” said The Boss.

  “Guess I’m no help,” I shrugged, looking at my lunch date. I was hungry and the discussion was devolving.

  “Hey,” said The Head. “Know who I’d really wanna fuck? That girl on Lost.”

  “Nuh uh,” said The Veep. “Psycho.”

  “No way,” said The Senior Veep.

  “Way,” said The Veep. “Agent had her in for a general last week. Wanted to crawl out my office window.”

  “Too bad,” said The Head. “Cuz she’s hot.”

  “Maybe tv fuckworthy,” said The Boss. “Not quite movie fuckworthy.”

  “Did you really just say that?” I asked.

  “What?”

  “There’s television fuckworthy and movie fuckworthy?”

  “Sure there is.”

  “And the difference is?”

  “tv screen is this big. Movie screen is this big.”

  “I don’t buy it,” said The Head.

  “Jennifer Aniston,” said The Senior Veep. “Hot on tv. Hot in movies.”

  “So what?” said The Boss. “She’s fuckworthy in two mediums. She’s the exception. Not the norm.”

  “Okay,” I argued. “So now we’re actually engaged in a discussion about a supposed difference between advertiser-supported fuckworthiness and ticket-supported fuckworthiness?”

  This is where my words drew momentary stares.

  “What about pay cable?” I added. “Where’s hbo in this equation of fuckworthitude?”

  “Fuckworthitude?” asked The Boss with a rhetorical lilt. “Fuckin’ writers.”

  “We’re going to lunch,” said The Veep.

  “Thanks for the help,” said The Boss. “Not really. I’m just being polite.”

  “Anytime,” I said.

  We walked down the back stairs and made our way to the commissary, talking a bit longer about the crass and shallow nature of show business. That and if such a

  conversation had broken out inside the offices of a major corporation it might have resulted in some kind of soul-sucking employment lawsuit.

  Am I proud of being part of such discussions? Not really. Especially now since my daughter has expressed an interest in acting as a career. So I need to ask myself these two questions:

  One. How do I feel about my daughter’s future being decided by rainmakers using their libidos as barometers for theatrical talent? And two. If I get roped into that kind of lowbrow conversation again, would I participate or walk away?

  Still processing.

  Congratulations, It’s a Bomb

  I don’t talk too much about Welcome to Mooseport. Not so much because it was a box office failure. On second thought, maybe so, because one needs to know the film actually exists before I can talk about it, right?

  The movie was born late one night while the War Department and I lay in bed. We’d been watching some news stories about the end of the Clinton presidency when she wondered aloud what the former Horndog in Chief would do after departing the White House.

  “I dunno,” I said. “Can’t imagine Bill Clinton not running for something. Wouldn’t be surprised if he ended up running for mayor somewhere.”

  The War Department laughed. And so it began. For the next twenty minutes or so, I joked aloud about a popular ex-president who retires to his Kennebunkport-like summer home to pen his memoirs. Instead, he gets wrangled into some local politics and is asked to help some town fathers out of a legal bind by filling in as mayor. Thinking the move would be good national pr for his upcoming book, the former president agrees to help out, only to discover the owner of the local hardware store had also thrown his hat into the mayoral ring. With both men having too much pride to step aside, the race is on. The story leaks and becomes national news. And when the ex-president assembles the team from his last national campaign, the majority of the country’s political media descends on the small Maine town. It’s David versus Goliath. Comedy ensues. The end.

  “You’ve got to write it,” the War Department insisted.

  I thought about it for a day or two. I had a definite vision for the movie. And part of that vision was putting

  a certain kind of funny on the page that I wasn’t sure I could pull off. But I knew who could. So I called my friend Tom Schulman. Though he’d taken home the Oscar for his Dead Poet’s Society screenplay, Tom was also responsible for comedies like What About Bob? and Honey, I Shrunk the Kids.

  I pitched Tom the story.

  “I love it,” he said. “But I think you should write it.”

  “Thanks,” I said, “but I’m calling you because I think you should write it.”

  “I’m flattered. I really love it. But I’m a firm believer that if it’s your story, you should write it.”

  “I know I can write it. But with my background in politics, it’ll come off more political than comical. It needs a certain kind of funny. And you’re it.”

  “Really Doug. Don’t get me wrong. I love it. But you really should write it.”

  We left it there, promising to talk again soon. My next call to Tom was pretty much like the last. He thought I should write it. I thought he should write it.

  Then I decided to play dirty.

  “Tom,” I began my evil threat. “If you don’t say yes. I’m going to hang up and call (A-list writer/director’s name withheld) and pitch it to him.”

  “You wouldn’t,” said Tom.

  “I can and I will.”

  “You bastard.”

  “I really don’t think I’m the guy to write it,” I insisted. “I can develop it. I can produce it. But it needs to be funnier than I am.”

  “Will you give me until tomorrow?” Tom eventually asked.

  I agreed. The next morning, Tom phoned me and told me he was in. Even better, he had a put deal over

  at Disney. He owed Joe Roth a script. One pitch meeting later, we had a deal. Tom soon got down to writing while I read his pages and gave my notes. I was thrilled. Tom’s an amazing writer. And the tone was pitch perfect. But before Tom and I could deliver our movie, Joe Roth packed up his office and left Disney.

  Damn.

  The Disney regime that followed had different plans. And Welcome to Mooseport wasn’t in them. Thus came turnaround (where the studio gives the project back, giving the filmmakers a chance to shop it around town). A company called Intermedia stepped in, bought the project from Disney, and eventually made a deal to co-finance the picture with Twentieth Century Fox. A couple years and a few re-writes later, we had a cast and, with some producing dexterity by yours truly, a hot comedy director in Donald Petrie, Jr.

  A casting note: When penning a screenplay, writers often imagine certain actors in a particular role. All the while, knowing that the exercise is a mere writing trick. The cast you end up with is rarely—if ever—as spectacular as the one in your head. In the case of Mooseport, I’d always imagined Gene Hackman in the role of the former president with Maura Tierney playing the part of Sally, the hardware guy’s longtime girlfriend who he and the former president end up competing over. Then bingo. As if I’d chanted some casting incantation, we had Gene Hackman and Maura Tierney.

  As for the hardware store everyman character of Handy Harrison? The studio dug in its heels, insisting on giving the part to sitcom and stand-up star, Ray Romano. Both Tom and I protested, certain that with Gene Hackman as the president, we’d be able to attract far more

  interesting casting. But Fox was sold on Ray. They made the choice simple. No Ray Romano, no green light.

  At least we had
a cast. A suitable location was scouted in Canada. We had a budget, a start day. All lights were green.

  Unfortunately for me, by the time photography started, I’d been relegated to the producing cheap seats. Between all the producers at Intermedia and Don Petrie, Jr.’s capable crew, providing me a passport to the set would have been quite unnecessary. That, and as a writer, I had assignments to attend. I was plenty happy to stay back in Los Angeles and fast-forward through dailies.

  Skip ahead nine months. The recruited audience tests were strong. The laughs were sustained and in all the right places. And though Ray’s performance had grown on me, neither Tom nor I were thrilled that a significant part of the studio’s marketing strategy was reliant on the popularity of Ray’s top-rated sitcom. Sure, the show was number one. But why pay to see Ray Romano in a comedy on Friday night when his loyal fans could see him on Everybody Loves Raymond for free from the comfort of their couch on Monday?

  Then came the early reviews. To call them cruel would be like describing Saddam Hussein as mean-spirited. The critics were less concerned with the comedy of it all and more interested in excoriating the tv star for deigning to share screen time with the likes of Gene Hackman.

  Welcome to Mooseport opened on a Friday afternoon. By Saturday morning we knew our movie would die a relatively speedy box office strangulation.

  “I guess everyone doesn’t like Raymond,” I joked to Tom. I thought maybe he’d laugh. Instead, he just sadly agreed with me, still stinging from failure.

  As for me, the pain of having my name on a flop was mitigated by the fact that I’d just started three months of photography on Hostage. Being super busy on a picture in production proved to be really good medicine.

  Another positive was that my parents had not just paid to see the movie at a theater—a millennial first—but had also loved it. My father said that because it was the first movie I’d made that was relatively clean of curse words, he could recommend it to his friends without being embarrassed.

  On the other hand, Tom’s post-opening experience might have leaned closer to the old Joel Silver tack. Joel used to say that on Friday when his movie opened, he always loved it like a firstborn child. But on Monday, if the movie had tanked, he’d hate it like a malignant tumor.

  Some eight months after Mooseport had crashed, burned, and faded from Hollywood’s memory, I got an early morning phone call. It was Tom. He sounded irritated.

  “I’m in New York on business,” he began. “Flew overnight on a red-eye. Barely slept at all.”

  “Sorry to hear that,” I said.

  “You’d think that flying in First Class, I’d get some fucking peace and quiet. But no. They didn’t wanna sleep like everyone else. They wanted to have themselves a party. Laughing their asses off like nobody else was on the plane.”

  I’d been there. It’s aggravating when you want to sleep and others are so rude.

  “So I complained to the flight attendant,” continued Tom, “When that didn’t work, I said, screw it. So I got up and walked back two rows. Had the mind to tell ’em what rude assholes they were.”

  “You actually got up and told ’em off?”

  “Oh, I got up alright. And when I got back there, I find out they’re not having a party. They’re just watching a funny movie.”

  “What movie?” I asked. But I think I already knew the answer.

  “Mooseport,” laughed Tom. I joined in, so loudly my nearby family thought I’d hurt myself.

  “So?” I eventually asked.

  “I didn’t say anything. I just returned to my seat and made a note to call you when I got to New York.”

  “Good stuff,” I said. “Worth losing a little sleep over.”

  “I don’t know if I’d go that far.”

  We both cracked up at that one, agreeing that Tom’s short tale of his red-eye to New York would be a fond memory with which to close the book on Welcome to Mooseport.

  Underdog

  Showbiz is a blood sport where nearly everybody keeps score. As some people play it, you’re only as good as your last box office gross or audience share rating. No surprise that it attracts the most competitive and win-at-all-cost forms of carbon life. And I’m not just talking about in business itself. It’s also about where you’re seated in that certain restaurant, the location of your studio parking spot, whether you travel first class or by private jet, where your kids attend preschool…

  …and even your ability to spell.

  I’m not talking about a Hollywood subculture where celebrity word nerds engage in underground spelling bees. Though now that I’ve thought of it, I wouldn’t be surprised if the notion is already being shopped to networks by reality producers.

  No, folks. I’m talkin’ about the game Scrabble.

  Before Words with Friends there was Scrabble. Some call it a spelling game. Some call it a game of wits and math. Some even refer to it as a war game in which letters are deployed into the field of play like soldiers armed with a variety of deadly weapons.

  Before tying the knot with the War Department, I’d played the game just once. I recall it giving me a headache, not to mention making me feel inept. I eventually got the hang of it, playing on cold winter nights with my wife by a crackling fire. Thus was the sum total of my Scrabble experience prior to my invitation to the inaugural Quetzal Cup.

  What is the Quetzal Cup?

  It began as an anniversary party for a Hollywood power couple. The pair rented a ballroom and invited

  all their smarty-pants friends to participate in a Scrabble tourney. Appropriately, it was a black-tie event. Catered dinner. Open bar. And some sixty-four players all vying for the gaudiest, over-blinged, four-foot trophy ever built. They named the trophy the Quetzal Cup, after the seven-letter word in the Scrabble Dictionary with the highest potential point value. I recall the party hosts furnishing handsome, striped-shirted referees, each holding a dictionary, ready to rush over to a game table to rule on spelling challenges.

  As you might imagine, the evening was designed to be a hoot. A gathering of Type A show-folk, sated on fine food, drunk on free booze, and cowed by their inability to form a simple one syllable word out of seven random tiles. The player who eventually won the night was the erstwhile headmaster to a posh private school. An academic. No surprise there, right?

  What followed though, was a surprise. There was a clamor from the party guests to repeat the event, not to mention the countless calls and queries from the uninvited to score an invitation to the second playing of the Quetzal Cup.

  A larger venue was procured. The number of players was doubled. And the tenor of the event turned shockingly serious. Sure, it was the same setup. Attire. Chow. Liquor. But it wasn’t just a bunch of competitive friends and family. There were authors present. Agents. Composers. Lawyers. Even the Ivy-League-educated daughter of a New York literary icon. Imagine my reaction when I learned that some of the new invitees were actually Scrabble tournament players. Within a year, what had begun as a lark and the world’s most ghastly trophy became something as coveted as—dare I say it—an Oscar.

  Yes, indeed. The Cup had a certified caché.

  Okay. So maybe the Cup wasn’t quite as coveted as a golden statuette. But the second playing of the event had an air of competition that landed somewhere between the Golden Globes and Nickelodeon’s Kids Choice Awards.

  My personal memory of the evening is still a bit of a blur. Not so much because of any boozing. I recall swilling more Diet Coke than my usual order of a double scotch on the rocks. Mental images remain—a constellation of tiles floating in my skull, some of which I was somehow able to string together into words.

  I recall that my second match was against a stunning actress whose name nor face I couldn’t quite place. She played fiercely all the while sipping her vodka tonic through a straw stuck in the corner of her perfectly lipsticked mouth. It was when I so cleverly played a high-point word describing a female body part that I suddenly recalled in what movie I’
d viewed my opponent. Or more importantly, what state of undress in which I’d seen her. In a game largely about forming words from random letters, the words “full” and “frontal” suddenly came to mind.

  I couldn’t recall the last time I’d blushed. But I did recall a certain heat flushing across my face.

  “Nice word,” she said flatly, never once looking up from the board.

  Three moves later I’d closed out the match and was moving on to the finals. And not long after that I found myself being handed the world’s ugliest trophy. As part of my acceptance speech, I was expected to impart a few snarky phrases to to my fellow competitors.

  Instead, I was momentarily caught speechless. And no. It wasn’t the formerly naked actress staring back at me as if she knew my secret. It was the entirety of players gazing back at me that caught me unawares. A hundred-

  plus industry folk dressed in formal attire with looks on their faces that I instantly recognized.

  It was a look I’d seen my entire life.

  You? How could you have you have pulled off a win? Seriously? But aren’t you the guy who writes those stupid action movies?

  “Yeah, me,” I found myself saying into the microphone. “And I’m truly humbled. Hell, I’m as surprised as the rest of you. Who knew that action writers even knew how to spell?”

  Sure. I got a few laughs with that line. As I was thanking my erudite hosts—one of whom was still trying to process my win—I simply remarked that words like “Kapow” and “Blam” must have been higher-value than he had anticipated.

  After the long evening, I drove home with the War Department by my side and the precious Quetzal Cup taking up the entire breadth of my sedan’s back seat. Then as I closed my eyes that night, I couldn’t help but reflect on my feelings. Not so much those of being victorious. But of being underestimated. A heavy yoke I’d been trying to unload my whole life.

  Now before you think I’m turning this into a shrink session, relax. I’m fully aware of where and when my issues were borne. Want to hear about the time my mom conspired with my best friend to lure me to the local Army recruiter? Yup. Mom wasn’t convinced that my plans to move to Hollywood and make movies were much more than the wishful thinking of a dreamy kid with lousy grades.