Selling Nostalgia

by Mathew Klickstein

  “What? What does that have to do with you?”

  “Gil wants me to take it down.”

  “Why you?”

  “I guess because I’m not only his documentarian but also his de facto assistant sometimes? Who else is he gonna get to do it?”

  “How much is he paying you for all of this, again? To fix all his own goddamn messes?”

  “Nothing,” Milt said, taking his hand off the phone mouthpiece, realizing how inane that was. “Not until we sell the film. I just gotta stay on until we do that, get my percentage, then we can all move on with our lives.”

  “Great,” Laney huffed. “Well, go track down that Aspergersy YouTube nerd—”

  “Asperger’s doesn’t exist as a clinical classification anymore, Laney,” Milt corrected. “And he’s not a nerd, he’s a geek.”

  “Oh my god, you are so fucking Jewish! Who carrrrres? Just call whatever this moron ‘fanboy’ is and tell him to take the video down like a good little doggy. Good luck.” She haughtily popped her lips into a kiss, closed the door, and could be heard stepping back into the shower.

  When the hell had Gil brought up blowjobs at the Q&A? Milt didn’t remember a moment of that. Then again, he remembered little to nothing of the screening. He did remember that feeling of cringing when Gil had said certain things onstage with Astra Singh moderating. Maybe that was one of those moments.

  Although there was still the question of, how does Gil Gladly at a screening of his own documentary about his career, in front of a bunch of his fans in LA end up talking about a goddamn Balloon producer from back in the day getting a blowjob, anyway?

  “Have you been listening to me at a-a-a-a-all?” Gil was shouting through the phone.

  Milt took himself off mute and shoved the phone back to his ear so quick it hurt. “Uh, sorry, Gil, I was just checking on who this kid is. He’s got like no subscribers and this video barely has any hits at all. Do you know what the Streisand Effect is? It really might be better to just leave this alone, and—”

  “I f-f-f-f-f-f-fucking hate fucking Barbra St-st-st-streisand. She’s a cunt. You’re lucky you’ve n-n-n-n-n-never h-h-h-h-h-had to s-s-s-s-ssit through a dinner with her,” Gil stuttered, much to Milt’s chagrin. Milt momentarily thought of how surprised he was when, three years back, he had finally given her directorial efforts a shot and realized what an incredible filmmaker she was; but now was not the time to quibble over film tastes and, sure, maybe she was a cunt in real life; who knew? “Y-y-y-y-ou tell him to t-t-t-t-t-take it off, or I’ll s-s-s-s-s-sue his ADHD ass st-st-st-straight into the n-n-n-n-n-n-nuthouse.”

  “Gil, dude, you gotta calm down, man,” Milt tried. “Your heart condition—”

  “D-d-d-don’t y-y-you w-w-w-orry about th-th-that r-r-r-right now, M-m-m-milt,” Gil barked. “And you better not be talking about any of that shit with anyone during any interviews.”

  With that, Gil hung up.

  Milt had wanted to ask what ADHD had to do with anything, but it wasn’t worth the call back.

  He was also confused by Gil’s progressive paranoia about anyone talking about his heart condition, especially Milt. Didn’t Gil know he could trust Milt? After all of this? Plus, hey, Milt wasn’t doing any interviews. He hadn’t even been up on stage during the premiere. The only show he’d be a part of on stage at all would be the CineRanchero one, if it didn’t totally collapse.

  He hadn’t really considered it before, but when he would send around the few interviews with Gil and articles about the film to some of his friends, there were questions they had about why the hell Milt was never interviewed. He was the director. It was his film. Many of the articles didn’t mention him at all.

  Milt was a latecomer to the whole “personal branding” B.S., and frankly wanted to keep the focus on Gil Gladly. There were more and more filmmakers who were doing the whole Michael Moore thing of putting themselves in the damn film and making the whole thing more about their own experience dealing with the subject at hand.

  That was a Tony Rigatoni move, not a Milt Siegel move. Milt wanted to keep it that way. Even if the marketing and, yes, production trend was going the other way.

  Milt had made the film, but it was about Gil and Gil Gladly was the one who got people buying tickets to the shows and talking about it. Right?

  So, what the hell was Gil talking about?

  Milt looked to the closed bathroom door and saw more steam rilling through the bottom and side slats, heard the rushing water, and wished he could be in the shower right then with Laney. Unfortunately, it was too small, and Laney and he, unlike a few of his girlfriends in the past who loved doing so, never took showers together.

  He went over to his desk in the corner, in the “office” to start up his laptop on his small black “wooden” IKEA desk that had been shoddily put together but worked for now—sort of, if not a bit slanty—and sat in his similarly shoddily put-together IKEA roller chair with the net-like backing that kind of worked but kind of was annoying, one of many reasons Milt tended to take the stupidly expensive option of doing his work at one of the three coffee shops up the street.

  As a “digital immigrant” as opposed to “digital native” (he was not quite a millennial, thank god, he always said to himself), this would be a job for the computer and not his phone. He needed to make sure he was concise but firm in his email to the YouTube geek posting that video of Gil. This needed to be handled just right.

  He knew it could be a tightrope to contact this guy. He didn’t want whatever it was he was about to do to “escalate the situation,” as was the phrase clickbaiters loved using along with “slammed” and “backlash.” Right now, no one gave a good goddamn about the video except for Gil, who was always looking his name up like any other celeb or pseudo-celeb and somehow found the video that no one else was looking at and would just ignore if left alone.

  Just then, Milt—naked on his wonky IKEA chair—heard the vibration of his cell phone over by the bed, and got up to go check to see what Gil Gladly’s emergency was this time. As he crossed the small room, he could feel the steam emanating from the door of the bathroom where Laney was taking her long, relaxing shower. She had probably gotten lost in the comforting warmth of the water and the stoniness in her head, but that was fine, because Milt had work to do.

  He huffed, picked up the cell, and placed the phone to his ear. “Hey, Dabney. How you doing?”

  “Fine, just fine, m’boy!” Dabney Malloy (not his real name; his “stage name,” despite having an almost non-existent IMDb page). “How was the screening in LA? I was reading up about it yesterday and it sounds like it went really well! Some nice press there, and some great pictures by people on Twitter and Instagram.”

  “Yup, it went pretty well,” Milt said, exhaling hard and walking back over to his chair where he sat his naked ass down. “The rest of the shows will go pretty fast, then hopefully we’ll keep getting some more good press, sell the thing, and that’ll be that, Mattress Man.”

  “Righty-o!”

  Dabney Malloy was always saying things like that. Milt had never actually met him, but Dabney had been recommended to him through a colleague of an acquaintance of a friend of someone Milt had called months ago when he needed some consultation on how to clear licensing rights and deal with Fair Use and all that stuff Milt (and, as he learned over time, everyone) didn’t really understand about how to use clips from TV shows, movies, radio spots, etc., that were needed in brief for the documentary.

  “I look forward to being there at that one glorious meeting when I sell this film for you guys!” Dabney said in that faux-radio-show-host-from-the-1980s voice that Milt always found slightly irritating but also slightly admirable. Clearly, at one time, Dabney had the voice for TV or film and he knew how to use it well. However, in cases like this, Milt wanted to talk to a person and not a character.

  After months of back and forth with Dabney over the phone, email, and text, it was clear Dabney was also slightly delusional, sligh
tly bipolar, and the kind of slick, double-talking, I’ll-do-whatever-I-have-to-do type of guy who would go from failing in film and TV in the eighties and nineties to somehow figuring out how to help people with licensing rights on their movies and TV shows—all five or six of them in the past (but, hey, because of this he was also cheap, Milt kept reminding himself)—that made for a challenging experience.

  Dabney also had this way of always talking about his recently deceased two cats who had died in a fire that hit the shed in the back of Dabney’s house before he had been forced to move to some outback hellhole he was always complaining about as though Milt and he were best buddies instead of the actual dynamic of being pseudo-compatriots, with Milt only needing a few pieces of advice from Dabney on how to handle the legal logistics before they could screen the doc.

  “Did you see the latest video I posted about Mitsy and Flitsy?” Dabney asked seriously, in that same mock-game-show-host-from-the-1980s way.

  It made Milt pull away from the phone to laugh before placing the phone back to his ear. “No, Dabney, I’ve been kind of busy with the tour and the new book and—”

  “That’s right!” Dabney exclaimed, shifting gears. Milt could hear the desperation in Dabney’s voice. “You still think at some point you could hook me up with your agent? I’d love to get her my book. The one about Mitsy and Flitsy? Once I’m done with it. The story of a young man, forty-eight years young, of course, ha ha ha! Haw! And how he arose through the ashes like the Phoenix to find himself pitted against the elements.…”

  Milt pulled the phone away from his face again and rubbed his closed eyes with his other hand. He needed a respite from Dabney Malloy. If only he had the cajones to lay down the law and say what needed to be so obviously said: “Dabney, you helped us with some of the licensing stuff. We paid you…way more than anyone else on the film, because that’s what you had demanded, and now we’re done with you. Go away, please. We have work to do.” Milt couldn’t bring himself to do it.

  He guessed for the same reason he couldn’t oust Tony Rigatoni until they were nearly done with the film because he just didn’t have it in him to say, “Tony, you are a selfish, untalented, moronic, mentally-deficient rich kid asshole who doesn’t do his work and doesn’t care about anyone else or this film that we only brought you on because you had made one other film four years ago that was pretty good and that we thought would mean you knew what you were doing. We were wrong. About a lot of things. Now get…the fuck…out.”

  Milt would need to learn how to fire people or cut away from people at some point. He couldn’t even do it with asshole friends or with evil, vicious girlfriends. It was why he still remained closely connected with so many people around the country throughout all the travels and work he’d done. He was like a human Facebook.

  Milt heard the rushing water in the bathroom stop and Laney stepping out of the shower to wash up and do her “girl stuff” with her face and whatnot in the sink whose faucet he could hear shooting on.

  “…and had the most adorable little kitten face you’ve ever seen before, Milton. I’m telling you, it’s just heartbreaking every time I think of her, and I can’t wait until I finish my book and you help me sign with your agent so we can publish it and I can help others cope with the loss of their cats.”

  “Okay,” Milt said. “So, everything is going all right?”

  “Right as right can be! Now, there is one small, teensy thing, though, Milton.”

  “Okay.…”

  “You remember all those things I was saying about my psychotic landlord at the new place?”

  How could Dabney even ask that? Aside from his stupid dead cats, it was the only thing Dabney constantly railed on and on about it, hence the whole “slightly bipolar” thing. Dabney would suddenly go from sweet and gentle middle-aged man vying to be best buddies with Milt, to this maniacal and evil beast who would go on and on about the most diabolical and brutal schemes he had as means to do away with his “crazy” landlord who was always making noises outside Dabney’s small cabin window in his bumfuck woodland area. You know, like, mowing the lawn and hedging bushes and trimming trees and all that “insane” stuff.

  “Mmm hmm,” Milt said, not liking where this was going, especially not at this time of morning. Why couldn’t Dabney have been up this early when Milt needed him to actually do the job they had been paying him for?

  “If you can believe it, the bastard is raising my rent,” Dabney spat indignantly. “Again! Can you beat that? Can you believe it? Can you, Milton? Can you believe he’d do that? To me right now, when I’m barely able to get by as is and am trying to finish this book about my kittens and help you guys out with the film and deal with chasing down the two other clients I had this year who still haven’t paid me?”

  That had been bothering Milt too. Why hadn’t Dabney’s other clients—if they even existed—paid him? What had he done to them? For the little he was supposed to do for the film, Dabney had caused a ton of problems for Milt, Ronnie, and Wallace in their dealings with him. But they still were fine paying him, even when he had asked for a bump in his compensation. Despite not deserving it or having brought it up until after he had finished connecting them to the right people and numbers and organizations to get their licensing handled.

  “What can I do for you then, Dabney?” Milt said, getting to the point and feeling the vibration that an email had come through.

  “Well, here’s the thing, Milton,” Dabney began the pitch. “We’re friends here, right? Right. Considering everything I’ve done for you guys, considering the discount I gave you on my services—which was pretty respectable, and which I was happy to give you because of the respect I have for Gil and for what you guys are doing with this beautiful documentary—I was hoping, I’m really needing one more payment if you could get Gil to give it to me to help me pay rent this month. Then I can get through the month, handle my asshole landlord, chase down my other two clients, and get paid, so I’ll be back in the black. Can you do that for me, good buddy?”

  Milt just loved how Dabney would call him “good buddy” and act as though Milt was Dabney’s only real friend when he needed something but would hang up on him or not get back to him at all when Milt had needed something from him. Milt loved it almost as much as he loved Dabney constantly bringing up the notion, as though they had always agreed upon it, that Milt would hook Dabney up with his agent for his asinine book or, more importantly, the notion Dabney would somehow be involved in the sale of the film, as though being a failed actor, a failed memoirist, and a halfway decent licensing consultant weren’t enough.

  They had already given Dabney two checks, three credits (including “producer”), and all the venting therapy he’d asked for. What more did Dabney Malloy want from Milt and the film crew that they hadn’t already given him just to get him to shut up and do his one simple job?

  Milt breathed out hard, put the phone on speaker, and checked his email to see—surprise—a vitriolic, misspelled, frantic email from Gil Gladly. He didn’t stutter when he wrote, and two of my industry friends saw the fiilm at the screening and they both agred that I NEED MY MONEY BACK FROM THE GUYS YOU HAD DO POST-PRODUCTION WORK ON SOUND AND COLOR!!!!!!!! IT LOOKS AND SOUNDS TERRIBLE!!!!!!! I WNAT MY MONEY BACK! tell those ideaiots now. call me.

  Milt rolled his eyes. Didn’t Gil ever sleep? Take a nap?

  Milt pulled the phone away from his face again, looked at the closed bathroom door, and listened to Laney go about her business in the sink. He closed his eyes, fantasized for a flash about a porn he really enjoyed involving a redheaded, pigtailed Pippi-Longstocking-type girl, riding some anonymous dude reverse cowgirl style in her pink 1950s letterman’s sweater and black-and-white Mary Janes, and got back on the phone with Dabney, who yet again didn’t seem to notice Milt hadn’t been saying anything and was likely not listening to his rambling screed.

  “So, what do you think, Milton, good buddy?”

  “Yeah, I get it, Dabney,” Milt said. “Bu
t, first off, we already paid you. Twice. You’ve probably gotten more money from this project than anyone else involved, to be honest.”

  Brief silence.

  “Well…I did give you guys a pretty good discount.”

  “And we really appreciate it, we do,” Milt said, conciliatorily. “But, man, come on…you made some calls. You hooked us up with some other people to help out. Ronnie and I did a lot of the actual work as far as finding out who owned what license and cataloguing everything for you, frame by frame from the film—”

  “Hey, I told you, that Ronnie kid you had help me out didn’t do shit. I had to have my assistant go over everything he did. Okay?”

  Oh, yeah.

  Milton kept forgetting that even though Ronnie—who had done a fantastic job, in fact, cataloguing everything because Milt was the one going over his work when Dabney was too busy fighting with his landlord that week to do it himself—was the one who had done so much to get the work done, Dabney had still employed some “assistant”—which was where some of the second check needed to go to, he claimed—to help him even further.

  “Mmm hmm,” Milt said. “Right, but, look, we did help you out a bunch with what you did, we did pay you twice, you did get pretty much more than anyone else on the crew, including me actually, and…. Hey, Dabney, I gotta call Gil, man. He was just emailing me and we’re having some other problem with the post-production—”

  “I saw that! Part of what I love about the film when you sent me the private Vimeo link. Your guys did a terrific job,” Dabney said. “I was very impressed, especially with how fast you got that done. How much did you say they did it for?”

  “I’m not sure right now, but it was a really good deal because I got some friends of mine at their post-production house in Austin to do it who are big fans of Gil, and….” Milt checked the email again. “Look, I really gotta call Gil.”

  “Can you ask him about getting me just a little more payment. Good buddy? Can you do that for me? For ol’ Dabney Malloy here?”