Selling Nostalgia

by Mathew Klickstein

“Better than payin’ ‘em,” Frankly said.

  At the same time, Gabe and Milt said, “Yup.”

  “This chick is saying that since we gave her an associate producer credit, she’d get us into the North Shore Film Festival because she’s friends with the main programmer’s son or some shit.”

  “Okay…”

  “And me and my crew all go back to our respective homes after the shoot; you know, to our regular real lives….”

  “Right…”

  “So, this chick is saying over email—when I do hear from her, because she’s yet another one of these fucks who only talks over email, barely even text—”

  “What’s wrong with that?” Gabe sat up and opened his eyes finally.

  “Don’t ask,” Frankly replied and Gabe slunk back down deeper into his chair.

  “She’s starting to say all this shit about how we really need to amp the sex and drugs and rock-and-roll as we keep shooting stuff and as we start getting into shaping the whole documentary and whatever.”

  “Awww, tell me she didn’t say ‘sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll!’”

  “Dude, that may have been the worst part. She DID!”

  “Ohhhhhh!” Gabe said. “Welllllll…”

  “What?”

  “She’s kind of right, but I get where you’re going with this.”

  “Dude, you make documentaries about how fucking dirty the ocean is and shit for YouTube Red and all that nonsense!”

  “Yeah, but I’m not trying to get into North Shore or any real festivals, man,” Gabe said, eyes shut, beaming like the Cheshire Cat. “That’s why I don’t got nooooooo money and need a roommate and his girl.”

  “The shit just got so stupid, and of course Gil kept saying the same thing he always says about this kind of thing: ‘Opinions are like assholes…’”

  “You never know what you’re gonna get?”

  This time they all laughed a little.

  “No,” Milt said. “Gil’s kind of adorable in espousing these old cliché aphorisms like he just discovered them. Like, ‘Opinions are like assholes: Everyone’s got one.’ And anyway he kept agreeing with me that there are no sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll in his story. We weren’t gonna push shit in there just to get into fucking North Shore. I mean, it’s not 2005 anymore.”

  “Do they even sell movies there anymore?” Frankly asked. “Or is it just a place for tech bloggers and shit to jizz all over themselves about the latest what-have-you, and entertainment reporters to talk about how shitty the catering was at the after-party for some new indie film starring Ryan Gosling and Keira Knightley?”

  “Whoa, Frankly!” Gabe said, lighting up.

  Frankly shrugged. “Meh, that’s what comes out when I spend too much time with this fawkin’ guy,” he said, pointing a thumb at Milt.

  “The point, Gabe,” Milt continued, “is that scene is just not for us. It’s for people who already have deals with HBO or Netflix or studios or whatever, and they have agents at CAA and want to go waterskiing and jet skiing the whole time they’re there. It’s for people who can afford to go. It’s not like they pay all your expenses even when you get in. I had a friend who went to Cannes a few years ago, and she and her director had to stay at some place way out of town where they didn’t even have running water. When they tried to get into one of the events their own movie was playing at, they had trouble because they didn’t have the right kind of super-expensive clothes, and it was an event they were supposed to be at! It’s crazy these days at these festivals. Besides, call me lofty or whatever, but I really do think this film is something different.”

  “A doc about some TV show guy from the eighties?” Gabe said, smirking. “Mmm hmm.”

  “Well, okay, it’s not that different,” Milt admitted. “Not in the way of what it’s about. But the way we made it is different. You’ll see. I wanted to do something different with how we got it out there. At least in the beginning. We’ll probably just end up selling it to Netflix in the end like everyone else, but for now, I was hoping we could get something going that no one else really does anymore. Our own little hardcore punk DIY tour. Y’know? Thought it might get us some unique press, too. A few weird clickbait headlines: ‘Good Golly, Gil Gladly! He’s Taking His Own Stream To Netflix.’ Or some shit like that. I don’t know. I don’t ever write for those sites anymore.”

  “Yeah, rrrrrrright,” Gabe smiled. “The people writing articles like that probably don’t even know what ‘DIY hardcore punk’ was. They probably weren’t even born yet.”

  “None of this matters anyway,” Milt said. “Because even if we wanted to go to the festivals, we couldn’t afford it.”

  “Dude,” Gabe laughed, choking up. “Why do you keep saying that?”

  “Come on, dude,” Milt said. “You know the drill. Even before you get in and have to spend all that money on whatever they don’t take care of for your expenses, the fuckin’ applications are totally expensive too, plus the packets you have to print out and make copies of and put together and send out, which ain’t cheap, especially when you have to include DVDs and press material and one-sheets half the time.…”

  No one said anything as Milt calmed down. Gabe and Frankly exchanged a giddily nervous look.

  “But come on, man,” Gabe tried. “You gotta go to some festivals. That’s where the buyers are, dude. “

  “Oh, we gotta? We GOTTA? That’s exactly why we’re not. We’re doing it our own way. Fuck it. The buyers already know what they’re going to pick up, anyway, and those are the ones that already have big names in them and are produced by the ‘big’ indies or whatever. The way we’re doing it gives us our own standalone things, around the country, we get the press, hopefully, then these networks and distributors or whatever come to us, or it’ll be easier when we have meetings with them later to say, ‘See? People are already talking about our flick and they dig it.’ Helps when we get bought and end up on a queue for some streaming service too. We’ll already have word-of-mouth, press, and all that, so we don’t get buried under the one hundred other movies that get released that week.”

  “Damn, man,” Gabe said, and could have either been talking about what Milt was saying but also how he was saying it, so vigorously and out of breath and all. “Guess you got it figured out.”

  “Also,” Milt added, “unless you know someone who can pay our way to one of those places, it doesn’t matter anyway. Or someone who can just slide our film into the series, which is pretty much what you need to do anyway, since, guess what? You’re not getting in unless you do. It is like Harvard. Elitism, man. It’s a sham, and nobody out there realizes it. Because they say ‘innnndddddepennndent filllllmmmm’,” and with this, Milt waved his hands around like a magician, eyes wide and, well, nuts.

  “Hey,” Frankly sat up to say, finally engaging more formally in the conversation. “Didn’t that douchebag who was working with you on this for a minute in the beginning, Tony, or whatever his name was, get his new film into North Shore?”

  “Ugh, don’t even remind me,” Milt said. “Tony Rigatoni.”

  “No way.”

  “Yeah, dude. That’s his name,” Milt said. “Tony Rigatoni. The dude was trouble since day one, fucking up every possible thing and just continuing to lag on things we needed, treating the rest of us like idiots just because he had some doc on Hulu already like right when Hulu first started getting big. It was a good flick and all, which is why we brought him on, but he didn’t have to act like that. Especially when I’d get these whiny emails from him that made it clear he can barely spell. I thought at first he might have dyslexia or something, but then I talked to some people I knew from the scene where he came up in Cleveland before he moved to LA and turns out he’s just some dumbass rich kid who couldn’t even graduate college—community college—and whose parents pay for all his shit. I’m getting so tired of that same fucking story over and over again.”

  “You and me both, brother.” Gabe sat up, looking over his left shoulder
at the Hollywood Hills brightening with the moving sun. “A lot of dumbass rich kids out here. And yeah, you get these texts and emails from them and it’s like, ‘Dude, do you even use autocorrect or spellcheck? It’s not fucking hard, moron. Read a fucking book some time.’ Then they get a film into Sundance every other year and it’s like, ‘C’mon. You don’t even know how to use Google Drive. Who you kidding?’”

  Gabe reached down to the ground, grabbing his bong and smoking what he could, despite almost an entire lack of ecru water by this point.

  “And of course I couldn’t tell Gil about this while we were dealing with Tony because then I’d look like a fuck-up for bringing him on in the first place. And Gil was already freaking out about so much anyway with the film, and money, and his medical stuff and everything.…”

  Gabe handed the bong over to Frankly.

  “I guess if those are the kinds of people going to North Shore these days—community college dropout rich kid douchebags and gals who think sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll should be jammed into a documentary about Gil Fuckin’ Gladly,” Frankly said, “I guess we just, uh…yeah.…”

  Frankly shook his head, trying and failing to remember what he was about to say. Then he stared at his right shoe.

  “It ain’t Richard Linklater or Robert Rodriguez or Mumblecore over there no mo’,” Milt said, breaking into a sing-song to the tune of “Old Gray Mare.” “Ol’ film fests, they ain’t what they used to be, ain’t what they used to be.…”

  “Were they ever?”

  “Go ask Peter Biskind,” Milt said. “Or Amy Taubin. Hey, Gabe, do you have any sunglasses I could borrow? I lost mine.”

  “Nah, sorry, man,” Gabe said. “What medical stuff, by the way? Like Gil’s stuttering thing? I always heard about that, but what’s the real deal with it?”

  “The stuttering is a thing, yeah,” Milt said. “Some of our film is about it. But not too much, because we didn’t want to make it all about Gil’s stuttering or mental differences or whatever.”

  “Mental differences?”

  “Yeah, we didn’t want to make it one of those typical trendy docs about social ills and shit,” Milt said. “We made a doc about Gil fucking Gladly, and that’s that. No sex, no drugs, no rock-and-roll, and only a bit about his stuttering thing, which just happens to be a part of his life. I meant his health stuff with some heart shit he’s been going through lately.”

  “Ohhhh,” Gabe said, “I didn’t hear about that.”

  “Yeah, no one has,” Milt said. “We get into it a little bit in the doc, but he didn’t want us going into it too deeply because it might fuck up his career or whatever.”

  “What career?” Gabe laughed. “Duder’s not been on TV in like ten years or more.”

  “Yeah, he hasn’t done too much lately,” Milt admitted. “But he still guest hosts on things and has done a lot of shit behind the scenes.”

  “Grotcha,” Gabe said with a beatific, cherubic grin, not really caring one way or another about Gil Gladly’s current career or lack thereof.

  “I feel bad for the guy, actually,” Milt said. “He has to go through this stuff with his heart, and even none of us who worked on the film really know how bad it is. He can’t talk about it with anyone or deal with it in any public way because, yeah, he’s worried it will fuck his chances to do other stuff.”

  “Yup, no one wants to hire someone who’s gonna have weird heart stuff on set,” Frankly said. “Insurance goes sky high.”

  “What’s so weird about it?” Gabe asked, turning to Frankly, giggling. “Mnnnyeeahh!”

  “Fuhhhh-UHHHHH-ckkkk you,” Frankly said, reaching down to grab some of the wadded-up, bong water-wet toilet paper and lobbing it at Gabe’s smiley face.

  “Hey, don’t be a douche like that Tony Spaghetti dude!” Gabe said, throwing the wet toilet paper ball back at Frankly.

  “Tony Rigatoni,” Frankly said.

  “Tomato sauce, tomahto sauce,” Gabe said.

  “Dude’s the fuckin’ Alan Alda to my Woody Allen from Crimes and Misdemeanors,” Milt said.

  “I wouldn’t say that too loud,” Frankly suggested. “Or too often.”

  “Woody Allen’s a crrrreeeeper, man!” Gabe ejaculated, finding it to be the funniest moment of the morning for some reason.

  “All I meant,” Milt continued, “is that Alda’s character in Crimes and Misdemeanors is this super-faux, smiley jackass with no integrity whatsoever and yet got all this success for his documentaries, and Woody’s character is this curmudgeonly contrarian who won’t play the game and has too much integrity and ended up with jack shit.”

  After an awkward grace note, Frankly asked earnestly, “Wait, how can someone have too much integrity?”

  “You guys want to go back inside and have some coffee? I can’t use too much water because of the drought limitations we’re ‘sposed to abide by or they ticket us for use on our monthly bill, but—”

  “No,” said Milt at the same time Frankly said, “Yes.”

  On his way to the sliding glass door, Gabe asked, “Hey, but you guys have a publicist, right?”

  “You think we can’t afford to apply to or go to film festivals, but we can hire on some twenty-grand a week publicist to get us three interviews that maybe will help us sell a few more tickets and get the word out?”

  Gabe stopped, confused. His smile dissipated and his brow furrowed. “Well, how else you gonna do it, man? You’re ‘sposeda get some publicist. You’re not gonna get shit without one.”

  “Sounds like someone’s got a case of the ‘sposeda’s,” Frankly chimed.

  “Dude, we can’t afford it,” Milt said. “How do I get you to understand what that means? You have your Silicon Valley ‘philanthropists’ who want to change up their images or whatever dropping in money to projects about water pollution and birds dying in Africa. They’re not giving money to us for something about a TV show guy from the eighties, all right?”

  “I don’t know,” Gabe smiled again and opened the glass door. “Sean Parker’d probably be up for something like that. That dude’s nuts, and—”

  Milt’s phone vibrated in his pocket, and he picked it up. “Hold on a second, it’s one of my guys. I gotta take this.”

  Milt pressed the phone against his ear and walked to the edge of the patio, his free hand on the brown, chipped wooden barricade, looking right out into the Hollywood sign.

  “He has ‘guys’?” Gabe said quietly, smirking at Frankly.

  “From what it sounds like, he has many guys,” Frankly quietly said back, obscenely pounding his closed fists together over and over again.

  What followed was a brief phone conversation between Milt and Ronnie, who wanted to post on their film’s social media shit he was running. Gil had been getting into a fight on Twitter with some troll fucker and Ronnie wanted to post a few screenshots from it.

  “Gil’s such a badass muh-duh! He don’t take no crap from nobody!” Ronnie reasoned, paraphrasing Cool Runnings.

  “No,” Milt said, explaining that even though Gil had a tendency to give into those people and actually fight with them on Twitter or Instagram or Facebook or whatever else, they—Wallace, Ronnie, Milt, and the rest of the gang—wouldn’t perpetuate that shit.

  They were going to keep everything positive, Milt said, reminding Ronnie that it had been Wallace’s original idea to not even allow any of the frequent swearing that was such a major staple of Gil Gladly’s vernacular into the film so they could keep it family-friendly and salable to a wider audience.

  “Ah, boo,” Ronnie said on the other end of the phone. “But this thread is so funny! Gil is hilarious!”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Milt said harshly, as though talking to a toddler begging for more ice cream. “We’re not going to have any of that crap on the film’s socials, no matter what Gil does. I gotta run. I’ll let you know how the premiere goes.”

  “Fine,” Ronnie said. “You’re no fun. Good luck at the screening. Say hi to Gil for me.
And don’t fuck it up, boyyyyyyyssss!”

  Milt chuckled. “You’re not the boss a’me.”

  “Yeah, yeah…”

  They said their goodbyes and hung up.

  Milt dropped his phone back into his pocket and stepped across the large balcony to Gabe and Frankly who had been listening—not intently, considering their state of mind—and were now standing to walk toward the sliding glass door.

  As Gabe opened it, letting Frankly inside, he said to Milt, “What the fuck was that all about?”

  “Nothing,” Milt said, making his way back inside where a Zappa (most likely Frank, Milt determined) was still blaring.

  They closed the glass door behind themselves, and Gabe went to make some coffee for everyone in what looked like a junkyard of a kitchenette across the city dump of a living room.

  “Dude, it really is crazy to hear you talking about someone like that who I used to watch on Balloon all the time as a kid!” Gabe called across the living room from the kitchen, barely making it over the Zappa. “Does he seriously fight with kids on Twitter?”

  “Not really,” Milt said, collapsing on the feculent, scratchy couch, upon which he would be unfortunately sleeping again that night before the premiere the next morning.

  “He seemed pretty cool at the San Francisco Comic-Con,” Frankly said, collapsing into his easy chair.

  “He’s just a person,” Milt said. “Like anyone else. He’s not a robot. He’s not a cartoon character. Then he happened to end up on TV for a long time at one point, and there it is. He’s got issues like anyone else.”

  “Sounds like a lot of them,” Gabe called out after grinding the coffee.

  “I guess that has to do with being on TV too,” Frankly said.

  Milt nodded. “Probably.”

  Gabe finished up the coffee-making, pouring what he had into three mugs that he found in the pile in the sink. “Whatever. Duder still sounds like a total butt-ass.”

  Gabe came in with one mug in one hand and two in the other. His hands were like bear paws, huge. But he also clearly had a great backlog of experience as a server and barista from his earliest days out of UCLA.