Selling Nostalgia

by Mathew Klickstein

  It was true, Frank Lee, Milt’s old Hollywood roommate and friend from film school, had clearly put on a few pounds since last they’d seen one other.

  Milt had the excuse of having gotten married to blame for his additional poundage.

  “Frannkkklyyyyy,” Milt said in mock bro-ish greeting, hugging the squat little gargoyle tight. Frankly reciprocated with an equally powerful I-still-work-out-a-little-and-also-it’s-good-to-see-you hug.

  Frankly was Korean, had a small growth that appeared to be another smaller ear underneath his actual left ear, was about four to six inches shorter than Milt depending on if one were to include Frankly’s jet black spikes of tenaciously moussed hair, never knew his father, and had moved back home with his mom in blue-collar Costa Mesa after Milt had moved away forever, or so he’d hoped, from LA, leaving Frankly sans roomie almost a decade earlier.

  Smart, ambitious, and infectiously likeable, Frankly made relatively decent money. Especially when it came to Milt’s small circle of fellow UCLA film school graduates. Surprise, surprise.

  The two old roommates were close. They’d spent many a late night playing endless games of cocaine-fueled speed chess while watching all manner of obscure art films courtesy of their slightly illegal all-region DVD player and equally endless supply of imported DVDs purchased from the Amoeba Records up the street from where they had been renting a tiny duplex in the slightly-but-not-especially shitty area of Hollywood. This was all back in the days when friends of theirs would refuse to visit at night for fear of the area being east of La Brea. These days, Milt and Frankly wouldn’t even be able to afford to park in the hipster-gentrified region. Ah, the circle of life.

  They had both been pretty fat then. It was a lot of late-night roach coach burritos/tacos and free booze from the Chinatown bar where Milt’s young and adorable waif of a managing editor at the paper he was editor-of-chief of moonlighted at back when no one went over there past dark. The days when Amy Winehouse had just started getting blasted on the speakers in the bar, with Milt looking up to say, “Hey, this girl’s onto something! She’s goin’ places!”

  Frankly and Milt went through a lot together in those hungry days. As time went by, they’d eventually arrived at the point where they could comfortably have discussions about whether or not girls ever fooled around with Frankly’s supernumerary ear during sex (yes, sometimes).

  They could talk about how, why, when Milt confessed he was leaving LA “forever,” Frankly decided to move back home. Why Frankly had to take care of his mom, who was suffering from Alzheimer’s. Why Frankly had to take care of his younger brother, who had also moved back home after a few failed attempts at rehab. This was just part of Frankly’s heritage as a first-generation Korean, he’d say, blunt as ever. Family first.

  Milt was typically loud; Frankly was typically quiet. Milt asked a lot of questions that sometimes got him in trouble with the wrong unwitting interviewee, and Frankly would only speak when spoken to. Once, when they robo-tripped on Coricidin, Frankly hallucinated that he was in the desert, while Milt hallucinated he was in the ocean. All of this going on in their living room straight out of a 1980s TV sitcom, furnished with vintage items aplenty; an explosion of brown, yellow, and orange.

  The boys were still, nearly a decade after they had moved apart, close enough that they were telepathic about where they were headed without a word spoken between them. They both knew what they were after and what they would get before night’s end.

  Milt smiled at Frankly, whose eyes were on the road, one relaxed hand on the wheel, celestial rictus smeared across his mug, and knowing what adventure did lay ahead that night.

  Milt turned his head to the fingerprint smudged passenger window and thought about how he had arrived at this very moment.

  g

  Less than two months earlier, Milt was finishing his preparation for the LA premiere while working on his MacBook Air with the Giving Tree decal on the back. He sat in a booth in the back of a trendy coffee shop in Boston where he had been living for the year with Laney.

  Milt had, rather impetuously, accepted an invitation to work for the Star, an alt-weekly in Boston that was supposedly one of the last in the country to still be turning a profit. A small profit, of course, but a profit nonetheless. Milt had wanted to give working as a staff reporter in the predictable structure of an office a try one more time.

  He had reverse-Green Acres’d Laney after—high on acid and wearing a meretricious electric-lime dress and black leather fuck-me knee-high boots—she had more or less picked him up at a bar where they had both been living in Lincoln, Nebraska. Laney had ended up in Nebraska for school. Milt had ended up in Nebraska as a way to keep adventuring around the country, remotely and locally plying his trade as a writer-filmmaker, doing his best to stay as far away from the loud noises, funky smells, and maddening hordes of LA’s and NYC’s robo-zombie masses.

  Oh, fuck, Milt realized.

  He was sitting there at his Boston coffee shop, multiple windows open on his screen detailing the forthcoming LA premiere, a stack of scrawled-upon pages piled up next to his two empty paper coffee cups that comprised the autobiography of an underground but “important” rapper from the early nineties named MC Phliphlop he was also working on at the moment. He’d been bouncing back and forth between film premiere prep and his ghostwritten life story of someone he had only met a year earlier through the auspices of his agent, who had mercifully tossed him an assignment that had been languishing around the agency office.

  Milt looked up from his work to see Gilbert Sidfeld, managing editor at the paper Milt had quit or been fired from, depending on who you asked. Gilbert Sidfeld would likely have informed you of the latter scenario. Gilbert Sidfeld, that irritating cur who resembled a hapless garden gnome, was standing across the café in line for coffee and holding a pink book.

  Milt texted Silverstein.

  “Shitsmelled just fucking walked into the coffee shop where I’m working right now.”

  “FUCK, DUDE! HE WAS SUPPOSED TO BE HERE TEN MINUTES AGO! ARE YOU SURE IT’S HIM?” Silverstein texted back.

  Milt looked up from his stack of pages and laptop. He was sure. It was absolutely Shitsmelled with his goofy glasses, ginger wizard’s beard, Boys’ Gap khakis, and tucked-in white button-up shirt.

  “Yeah, there he is, man-bun and all,” Milt texted to affirm.

  “Dude, I’m about to scoop the fucking Herald on this story I’ve been working on all weekend, I need Shitsmelled to approve it, and you’re telling me that that shit-stain piece of FUCK is waiting on line for coffee with a goddamn fucking book in his hand like a little cuck? Yell at him to get his bony little ass over here or I swear to fuck I’m gonna throw my computer through his office window,” read Silverstein’s characteristically vulgar, frantic, and right-wing leaning text.

  “Oh, and his book is pink,” wrote Milt, laughing at his own text, knowing what it would do to the already-enraged Silverstein.

  “WHHHAAAAATTTT???!!! FUCCCCCCKKK HIMMMMMM AND HIS FAGGOTY FUCKLE PINK BOOK!!!!”

  Silverstein was twenty-five, a few years out of journalism school, and forever bragged that his dad was an old man when he had him. To Silverstein, this officially meant he was not a millennial. Yes, he was twenty-five, but that old man dad of his had raised him like he was always twenty years older.

  Silverstein made Milt laugh and always spoke his mind. Milt could trust him, a rare commodity these days. Silverstein would also rail about rich kids almost as much Milt, even though Silverstein still lived at home. “Saving for a house of my own” was always the excuse Milt heard in such seemingly hypocritical cases.

  Silverstein was Boston through and through, aside from being Jewish. And he was one of those provocateurs who proudly bought and showed off to his friends via text his MAGA hat, but would never dare wear the red target in public.

  “I CAN’T FILE MY STORY UNTIL SHITSMELLED ‘GOES OVER’ IT! FUCK THAT PIECE OF CUCK SHIT! MY NOSE IS STRESS BLEEDING AGAIN BE
CAUSE OF THIS FUCKLE! IT’S ALL OVER MY DESK.”

  To be as clear as possible, Silverstein texted Milt a photo of his desk splattered with droplets of cranberry-red blood.

  Milt had learned a lot of new words from Silverstein, “cuck” being a favorite of the latter’s, who used it unsparingly. Especially in reference to Gilbert Sidfeld, who Silverstein called a cuck because of Sidfeld’s feebleness and total inability to properly manage the paper.

  Milt and Silverstein had also discovered that Sidfeld’s fiancée, who ran a non-profit that worked with prison labor to clear the streets of roadkill, wrote most of his weekly editorials for him, uncredited. Apparently this was extreme “cuckness,” according to Silverstein’s definition.

  What a trip it had been that there was an approximately six-month period there in which the two most important men in Milt’s life were named Gil. Then again, Laney Jenkins wasn’t the only girl named Laney Milt had ever had a serious relationship with either, and most of the other men in Milt’s life were named Dave, including both his dad and former stepdad.

  Milt’s phone vibrated from an email notification. He clicked on the screen’s Gmail icon and waited for his inbox to pop up, hoping like an adolescent girl waiting by the phone for a call from a boy she had a crush on that it was an email from CineRanchero. The independent theater chain had been screwing up quite literally every possible aspect of the largest and most elaborate screening “experience” on the upcoming Gil Gladly documentary tour.

  Nope. It was an event e-vite from Jessica Chen.

  Milt didn’t bother reading it, and answered the incoming call from what read out across his screen as GOOD GOLLY GIL GLADLY.

  “S-s-s-so, is this g-g-g-guy Latham a complete and t-t-t-total f-f-f-fraud?” Gil screamed into the phone. “Or is he j-j-j-just a c-c-c-complete and total f-f-f-fuck-up?”

  It was over almost exactly the same time span that Milt learned colorful new words and phrases from Silverstein that he also had the illuminating experience of getting really intimate with Gil Gladly over the phone, email, and their occasional meetups during the wrap-up phase of the doc. He became familiar with the peculiar paradox that Gil Gladly, a man known mostly for his children’s show, swore like a stand-up comic from the seventies which, after all, was also what he was.

  It had been somewhat difficult to edit all of Gil Gladly’s profanity, not to mention what Milt would call if he were a blogger certain “tone deaf” jokes, from the documentary. That had been Wallace Connors’ idea.

  Wallace Connors had been a longtime friend of Milt’s whom he knew through the nostalgia industry channels. Wallace had set up a modest series of publicly-held reunions for stars from yet another old Balloon show called KidKidding, which was essentially Whose Line Is It Anyway? with kids.

  Milt had brought Wallace on as the editor of the project, despite the fact Milt was in Boston and Wallace worked from his office in Atlanta. The bonus, aside from Wallace being a longtime trusted friend of Milt’s, was that Wallace’s office also had all of the top-notch editing and audio postproduction equipment they’d need, along with a small staff Wallace was happy to put to work at night and on the weekends, with Milt calling, emailing, and Skyping in with his notes over those three blistering months of cut after cut after cut of the doc.

  Wallace’s family, originally Mormon, had been on a ministry mission in the Middle East back when Wallace was a boy. For whatever reason, his parents decided over time that Islam was the true way, and thus they converted, which was why Wallace Connors, pale as a ghost with premature shockingly white Steve Martin hair and an otherwise absolutely Teutonic appearance, was a devout Muslim who would not drink, do drugs, or swear.

  Milt wanted authenticity in the doc. He wanted the fans to see Gil as his complex, contradictory, nuanced, real-human-being self. But Wallace had convinced Milt that leaving out Gil’s volcanic potty-mouth would give the film a broader appeal. It would be more accessible to larger audiences and thus, bing-bing-bing, more marketable when it was time to sell the fucking thing.

  Milt looked down, away from the line of folks waiting for coffee, from Shitsmelled and all the rest of them.

  “I’m s-s-s-s-serious, man!” Gil continued on the other end of Milt’s phone, stuttering maniacally.

  This was Gil Gladly the businessman, the executive producer of the documentary now. The boss. Not to be confused with Gil Gladly, your ol’ pal from TV’s KidTalk.

  Milton Siegel well knew the difference.

  Milt was up on his feet, leaving his laptop and pages of copyedited manuscript at his table. Making sure not to be noticed by Shitsmelled, who was nearing the front of the line now with the bewildered look of a child lost from his parents in a grocery store, Milt clamped his phone to his ear and used his right elbow to shove his way through the glass door.

  He made his way through the pastel-colored outdoor tables of the café where a few brave bundled-up souls were reading, laughing, talking, and having their morning coffee and breakfast sandwiches in the grayish, fantastically funereal 9 a.m.-ish morning.

  “I emailed Latham yesterday, Gil, and told him that this has been getting out of hand,” Milt said into the phone as he sliced through the windy, semi-wintry air, across the café patio and away from the other patrons. “I said if he couldn’t get back to us by the end of this week, we are going to have to move on to another theater. This is getting fucking ridiculous. I feel really bad I recommended him, but I’m telling you, his theater would be perfect for our LA screening. His film society has a huge following, all the big press out there is always promoting his special events, and I had no idea he was such an asshole.”

  “Yeah, I just s-s-sent him the s-s-s-same exact email before I called you,” Gil said, calming down.

  “Well, I guess we’ll just have to wait and see how Herr Latham deigns to respond.”

  “I just don’t know what he expects me to do.” Gil sounded wounded now. “He’s been totally condescending and patronizing, demanding I send him this clip and that clip and photos from my personal archives, and I don’t have all that stuff, as you know. I threw out most of that shit after I closed my office last year, and I don’t know how to work any of these stupid programs on my computer where the rest of my photos and clips are, and—”

  “Gil,” Milt said, stopping the man before it was too late. “I know. I know. I’m sorry Latham’s been putting you through all of this.”

  “I tell you what, if he doesn’t get back to us, fuck LA. I hate those people anyway. I’ve never done well in LA. Ever since my stand-up days. Fuck LA. We don’t need it. All the other screenings are set, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What the fuck is going on with that huge-ass motherfucking thing in Chicago? What’s it called again, CineRamaDama?”

  “CineRanchero. It’s their flagship theater and we gotta do it. It’ll be the big one on our tour. I’m dealing with them. You don’t worry about it. You have enough shit to deal with right now, okay? Watch your fucking heart too, man.”

  “Don’t you w-w-w-worry ab-b-b-bout th-th-that. Y-y-y-ou’re n-n-n-n-not m-m-m-m-my m-m-m-m-mother.”

  “I thought you didn’t get along with your mother,” Milt said with a friendly huff.

  “Y-y-y-y-eah y-y-y-yeah, s-s-s-mart guy.”

  Milt had gotten Gil calm enough that was he was stuttering again, ratcheted down to perhaps anxiety level seven.

  Milt turned his head, breathing in the crisp Boston morning air…and almost choked when he saw Shitsmelled coming through the glass door. Luckily, their eyes didn’t meet and Milt whipped around before his ex-boss could find a place to sit and drink his coffee, enjoy his pink book, and abandon Silverstein back at the paper tearing out the last few hairs on his prematurely balding Jewish head.

  Speaking of the devil, Milt’s phone vibrated with a text from Silverstein: “TELL THAT CUCK TO GET BACK HERE RIGHT NOW!”

  “S-s-s-so you’re h-h-h-h-handling Chicago is w-w-w-w-what you’re t-t-t-t-tel
ling me, Milt?”

  “Yeah, Gil, I’m handling it all. Don’t worry. You know how the CineRanchero people have been this whole time. Christ, just two days ago I saw they couldn’t even fucking spell the movie right on their ticket page for the flick that they finally put online.”

  “W-w-w-why aren’t th-th-they t-t-t-tweeting anything out about our screening?” Gil shouted.

  “I’m handling it, Gil,” Milt said. “I told you. You gotta trust someone in your life, and it might as well be me!”

  There was a pause. Had he crossed the line?

  Milt turned around slowly to see Shitsmelled lost in his book, unconsciously playing with a few strings of hair flowing out of his man bun.

  “Y-y-y-y-you’re r-r-r-right, man,” Gil said. “Y-y-y-y-you’ve b-b-b-been k-k-k-k-killing it,” Gil said, calming down to the point of cycling back to dropping the stutter altogether. He spoke clearly and slowly. “Without you, none of this would have happened. I just wish I could pay you for everything, but, you know…”

  “Yeah, I know,” Milt said, biting his bottom lip. “It’s okay. I’m not…doing this for the money. I’m doing okay right now. Just as long as we sell this thing and get something. Netflix should take the doc, if nothing else. That’d be nice. And it’s a calling card for all of us. Especially Ronnie.”

  “Who the f-f-f-fuck’s Ronnie?”

  “Ronnie Clark. Our DP, remember? You were nice enough to meet up with him for a lunch a few months ago after we finished shooting so he could pick your brain a little about all the Hollywood bullshit. I told you, you’re like his hero, and he thinks this thing could really kick start his career.”

  “Right,” Gil said. “How’s Donnie doing?”

  “He’s okay, and his name is Ronnie. He’s based out of Denver and he’s been getting hit pretty hard by that ‘snowstorm of the century’ deal, but—”

  “Right,” Gil said, then mumbled, “Hmm, the snowstorm. Denver. Mmm.”