Call the Shots

by Don Calame

  “Oh, my God,” Matt says. “Fit it tight, Fit it snug. A rug from Doug’s is a big warm hug.”

  “I’ll give you one guess as to who Doug is.” Uncle Doug winks at us, then busts up laughing as he takes a slurp on his soda.

  “That’s cool,” Coop says. “It must be sweet to be your own boss.”

  “It’s a situation I highly recommend.” He taps a cigarette from a blue pack of American Spirits and lights it with a Sabres Zippo. “All right, enough with the niceties. I know you didn’t come all the way out here on the shittiest day of the year to talk to Uncle Doug about what he does for a living. So, what the hell do you want?” He takes a drag on his cigarette and releases the smoke. “Are we changing your amplifier repayment schedule or what? Ten bucks a week for the next two years too much of a burden on your allowance? Come on, spit it out.”

  All of sudden, I don’t want to ask him for the money anymore. It feels wrong. Like I’m taking advantage or something.

  “Well?” Doug says. “Let’s have it. The cat got your tongue or what?” He flicks the ash off his cigarette, and it tumbles down the mountain of butts piled in the ashtray.

  “Nothing,” I say. “We don’t want anything. We just —”

  I feel Coop kick my ankle under the table.

  I take a deep breath. “Okay, that’s not completely true.” My voice comes out a little squeaky. “I mean, we did want to see you but . . . there’s something else we needed to ask you.”

  “I’m all ears.” He takes another drag on his cigarette.

  I press my sweaty palms into my thighs. “Okay, so, you know how Mom’s pregnant?”

  “What?” Doug reels backward. “My sister’s pregnant? Are you shitting me? When the hell did that happen? And why is Uncle Doug the last one to hear about this?”

  Every inch of my skin prickles with heat. “I — I thought,” I stammer. “I just assumed . . . I mean . . . You really didn’t know?”

  “Ha!” Doug points at me with the two fingers that hold his cigarette. “Gotcha! You always were a little too easy to screw with, Seanie.” He cocks his head. “Come on, now. You really think your mother wouldn’t tell Uncle Doug that she was having a baby?”

  I breathe a supreme sigh of relief. “No. Yeah.” I force a smile. “You got me for sure.”

  “That was damn good.” Coop laughs. “Even I was convinced. And that’s from the baron of bull. Forget about rugs — you should have been an actor.”

  “Funny you should mention that,” Uncle Doug says. “I did contemplate that once upon a time. Way back in the days of my youth.”

  “Well, count me in as being fooled,” Matt adds, shooting me a meaningful look. “That was a brilliant performance.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah.” Doug glances up at the Buffalo Bills clock over the sink. “Consider Uncle Doug sufficiently lubed up. Let’s get on with the reaming.”

  I look at my friends, then back at Uncle Doug. Screw it. There’s no subtle way to do this.

  “Okay.” I shake my head. “I’m just going to say this because . . . well . . . I sort of feel bad about it, but I’m desperate and there’s no one else I can turn to.”

  “Uh-oh, here it comes. The International Bank of Doug.” Uncle Doug leans back in his chair and takes a long pull on his cigarette. He blows the smoke out and smirks. “Come on, already. Let’s have it. How much do you need, and what do you need it for?”

  UNCLE DOUG IS DEAD SILENT after I explain the whole situation. He strokes his long bristly beard and regards us with his piercing, bloodshot eyes. His neck is stained an angry red, highlighting every little bump, mole, and broken capillary.

  I can’t tell if he’s getting ready to blow his stack or if he’s just thinking really hard. The thick scent of smoke and stale pizza and uncomfortable silence chokes the oxygen out of the kitchen.

  Uncle Doug crushes out his cigarette. He sniffs, then clears his throat. “Okay,” he finally says. “Let’s do a little role reversal here. If you were me, and I came to you with this request, what would you do? Be honest, now. Uncle Doug’s got a finely calibrated bullshit meter.”

  “He’d give you the five K,” Coop answers. “Because he could see the upside of the whole sitch. The exposure. The advertising. The Doug’s Rugs product placement. The community goodwill. Not to mention the chance to turn a small investment into a mega-fortune.”

  Uncle Doug smirks at Coop. “Thanks for the sales pitch, P. T. Barnum.” He turns back to me. “But I want to hear it from Seanie. Would you lend me the money or not?”

  “I don’t know.” My gaze drops to the scratched-up wooden kitchen table. “I might.”

  “Might? Or would?” He leans to the side. “Come on, now. Meet my eyes like you’ve got some huevos rancheros. I want a firm yes or no. Do you lend me the cash?”

  “It would depend, I guess.”

  “On what?”

  “On if I thought you could pull it off.”

  “Fair enough.” Uncle Doug nods. “So, now I need you to look me square in the face and tell me if you honestly think that you’ll be able to produce a motion picture decent enough to generate enough money for you to pay me back.”

  My eyes slide over to Coop and Matt, who look like they want to bolt.

  “Uh-uh.” Uncle Doug beans me with an empty pack of cigarettes. “The answer’s not over there.” He reaches over and pokes my belly. “What’s your gut say? Can you do it or not?”

  I want to look over at my friends again, but I force myself to focus on my uncle. “Yes,” I say. “I think we can do it.”

  “Wrong!” Uncle Doug roars, slapping the table, which causes a thin cloud of tobacco-scented dust to rise in the air. “You want to think you can do it. But you don’t really believe it. Not deep down in your scrotum, where it counts. I can read you like a hockey stats chart, Seanie.”

  “So . . .” My stomach winces. “You won’t help us out, then?”

  “I didn’t say that.” Uncle Doug grabs the extinguished joint from his ashtray, straightens it out, and relights it. He takes an epically long toke, then blows the smoke in my face. “Yet. I’d like to see your business plan before I make my decision.”

  “Business plan?” I blink, my eyes dry and stinging from the smoke. I use it as an excuse to cup my palm over my nose and take a reassuring whiff.

  “No business plan, huh?” Uncle Doug says. “How about a list of expenditures?”

  “A what?” I ask, sinking down in my chair.

  “A budget, dummkopf.” Uncle Doug reaches over and swats the side of my head. “The spreadsheet that lays out exactly how you intend to spend my money.”

  “Oh. Um.” I look at Matt and Coop, who just stare back at me. “We . . . We know we need at least two hundred dollars for the film festival entrance fee. And then any extra will be used —”

  “Right. No budget. Okay, then, what do you have for me? Some comparative box-office analysis? A marketing strategy? A film trailer? A script, perchance? Anything?”

  “Yes, we have the idea,” I say, sitting up. “It’s the story of this guy —”

  “All right, just so I’m clear on this.” Uncle Doug hoists himself off the chair and starts to pace the room. “Am I to understand that you would like me to be an investor in your film project? One that has no budget? No business plan? No marketing strategy? No script? To be produced by people who have absolutely no moviemaking experience?” He bobs his head in the affirmative. “Is that the general gist of things here?”

  “Yeah.” I pull my cupped hand away from my nose, the smoky stench of the kitchen having permeated my skin. “I guess so.”

  “You guess so?” Uncle Doug roars with laughter. “Okay, well, notch a point for stupid honesty.” He makes an imaginary check mark in the air with his smoldering roach. “Right, so. Here we go.” Uncle Doug clears his throat and starts pacing again. “Obviously, investing in your film would be an idiotic colossal gamble. I suppose it could be likened to shoving a fistful of cash up your ass
hole and expecting you to shit out gold coins.”

  “I’m sorry,” I mutter. “I never should have ask —”

  “Uhp.” Uncle Doug cuts me off with a traffic cop hand. “Let me finish. You did ask the question, Seanie boy, and now you’re getting your answer. So sit back and take this like a man.”

  I do as I’m told, crossing my arms over my chest to avoid the urge to sniff my palm — unlike a man.

  “All right, now,” Uncle Doug continues, “let me just say this right off the bat. There’s no way in hell I’m giving you kids five thousand dollars to piss away on a movie.”

  My shoulders slump. My head drops. “Okay, well, I guess we better —”

  “As I was saying. Five grand is out of the question. But. Uncle Doug happens to be a gambler. And he bets on cards. He bet on horses. He once even bet that his tongue was longer than every other guy’s at his Monday night poker game. Which it was. By around half an inch, in case you were wondering.” He brushes this out of the air. “Anyway, back to the terms of our deal.”

  I shake my head, not sure if I’ve heard him correctly. “Our deal? Does that mean —?”

  “Yes, that does mean.” His eyes bug out as he grins. “Crazy Uncle Doug is going to help you out with your movie. With one thousand dollars. Are you surprised? Well, you should be. Because it’s one of the stupidest things I think I’ve ever done. But hey, could the odds of me getting rich off your movie be much worse than Powerball? At two hundred million to one, I doubt it. And if I can lay a hundred bucks on that every week, why not bet a cool grand on my bozo nephew?”

  “A thousand dollars?” I glance at Coop, who shrugs like it’s better than nothing. “That’s . . . great.”

  “You bet your sweet ass it’s great.” Uncle Doug throws back his head, cackling insanely.

  “Thank you,” I say.

  “Don’t go slickin’ your slacks just yet, mister.” He plops himself back down into his chair and taps out another cigarette. “You boys are going to want to hear the conditions before you agree to the contract.” Uncle Doug grabs his Zippo and lights up his American Spirit.

  “Conditions?” Matt asks. “What kind of conditions?”

  “First and foremost.” He holds up one chubby tobacco-tanned finger. “If you actually do manage a miracle and win this contest, Uncle Doug wants twenty-five percent of the prize money plus fifty percent of any subsequent profits thereafter.”

  Coop leans forward. “Okay, wait a second —”

  “Condition numero dos.” Doug holds up his fingers in a pudgy peace sign. “If you do not win the contest, you are going to return my initial investment. Somehow. Someway. We can work out the details later, but that cash will end up back in my pocket when this is all over.”

  I nod. “Got it.”

  “Three. As your new executive producer and partner, I am now going to be intimately involved in all aspects of this production. I want to have full script approval, of course.”

  “What?” I grimace. “Why?”

  Uncle Doug shrugs. “I’m not about to have my good name associated with a piece-of-crap movie. I have a reputation to uphold.”

  “In rugs,” Coop says. “Not in films.”

  “This kind of thing could have major repercussions on my business. What if you say something racist in your script? Or sexist? Or just something really, really stupid? I could lose customers that way. Nope. I want to see each and every scene before it’s filmed.”

  “All right,” I concede. “Is that everything?”

  “Hardly. I also want casting approval, and in-movie advertising for my store.” He nods and smiles at Coop. “And . . . a prominent role in the film.”

  “Okay,” I say. “I’m sure there’s some part we can use you for.”

  “The villain.” He points at me. “I want to play the lead villain.”

  I meet Coop’s eyes. He gives me a reluctant nod. And he’s right. What other choice do we really have?

  “Sure,” I say. “Why not?”

  “All right, then.” Uncle Doug rubs his hands together. “I’m glad we’re all so amenable. Now, onto my final stipulation.” He grins. “This one you’re really not going to like.”

  I SIT BY MYSELF IN THE CAFETERIA, waiting for the happy couples to arrive, breathing in the rising sweet fumes of my barbecue riblette on festival rice. I poke at my overnuked food with a plastic fork as I attempt to jot down script notes on a yellow legal pad.

  I scribble ZONKEY! at the top of the page. Now what? How should the movie start? With our two main characters, Jack and Stacy, hanging out at school? Or maybe at the zoo. With the mad scientist coming up with his humanzee plan — Dr. . . . Somebody-or-other.

  A hand suddenly claps me on the shoulder, causing me to jump.

  “That better be the script you’re working on there,” Coop says.

  I look up and see him and Matt plopping their trays on the opposite side of the table.

  “Starting to, yeah.” I put my pen down. “Where’s Helen and Val? I thought we were telling them about the movie today.”

  “They’ll be here,” Matt says. “They had to have a girl meeting in the bathroom.”

  Coop chin-gestures at my pad. “How much you got so far?”

  “Not much,” I say. “I’m just wondering: are we going to be able to pull this off with only a thousand bucks?”

  “Have a little faith, dawg,” Coop reassures me. “Didn’t you ever see Field of Dreams? ‘If you build it, they will come.’” He swats Matt’s arm. “Go on. Tell Sean what you told me. About the budget.”

  Matt teeter-totters his head. “Well, I did a little number crunching, and it looks like our biggest expense is going to be the equipment. A movie-quality camera costs around three grand. So, obviously, we can forget about that. And renting one — assuming we could even get someone with a credit card to do that for us — can run five hundred bucks a week. Which would use up our entire budget fast.”

  “Exactly,” Coop says. “So, the linchpin is figuring out the camera sitch. We do that, and we’re golden. But don’t worry, I’ve got a few ideas percolating. What we need to be discussing right now, though, is casting.” As Coop mixes his turkey tetrazzini, the sweaty-clothes smell wafts over and makes me gag.

  “What about it?” I ask.

  “We have to get on it. Asap. Which is why I put a notice on Craigslist last night. And on the school’s online bulletin board. So, we should have a pretty nice turnout this Saturday.”

  “This Saturday?” I sputter. “That’s in two days. I can’t have a script by then!”

  “Don’t sweat it, boss,” Coop says. “We just need the first few scenes for the auditions. I want to get our main actors set so we can start shooting this pup the second we’re ready to roll.”

  I look down at my meager scrawlings. “Okay. I guess I can have something by then. Where are we doing it?”

  “Your place,” Coop announces.

  “My place.” I cough. “You didn’t tell me anything about that.”

  “I’m the producer here. I have to make a thousand decisions a day. I can’t be expected to run every single one by you. Besides, I mean, I wasn’t about to have a bunch of weirdo actors tromping through my house. And Matt’s horny grandpa would just scare away all the hot babes.”

  “It’s true.” Matt nods, taking a bite of his sandwich.

  “So, really,” Coop continues, “it was a process of elimination.”

  “Fine.” My right knee starts jackhammering. “I’ll clear the house somehow.”

  “Quoi de neuf?” Valerie says, her French doing what her French always does to me. She and Helen set their plates of food down and take seats next to their respective boyfriends.

  “Casting actors,” Coop says as if he understands what she’s talking about. “We’ve decided we’re going to make a movie. A low-budget horror film. You guys want to help out?”

  “A movie?” Helen perks up. “You mean, like, for a school project? That’d be cool.
”

  Coop shakes his head slowly. “No. Not for school. For reals. A feature film.”

  “Right.” Valerie chuckles. “What’d they slip into the turkey tetrazzini today?”

  Coop ignores Val and turns to Helen. “We’ve already come up with a killer story idea, and we’ve lined up some serious financing. Matt’s been sketching out the business plan, I’m researching potential shooting locations, and Sean’s, like, halfway done with the script.” He gestures toward my legal pad, which I surreptitiously cover with my hand.

  “What we don’t have,” Matt adds, “is someone to do the music, the editing, and the special effects. Would you girls maybe want to be in charge of those things?”

  “Wait a second,” Helen says. “You’re really serious about this?”

  “One hundred percent,” Coop says.

  “Oublie ça!” Valerie laughs. “Sorry. Thanks, but no thanks.”

  “Why not?” Coop asks.

  “I just . . .” Val sighs. “Look, no offense or anything, but I’m well aware of your crazy plots and schemes, Cooper, and, quite honestly, I’d prefer not to be included.”

  “This is no plot,” Coop insists. “This is a mission. A supreme act of kindness. We’re making this film to help out our friend here.” He motions across the table at me. “Sean’s family is in crisis. As I’m sure you’re aware of, his mother is expecting a baby any day now and —”

  “Actually, it’s a few months,” I correct him.

  “And,” Coop continues, giving me the stink eye, “they have nowhere for this brand-new bundle of joy to lay its down-covered head.” He turns to address Valerie. “The money we make from this movie is going to help the Hance family expand their home so that they can welcome their new family member with open arms and a room of his — or her — own. Now, if you don’t want to help out a poor innocent baby, well, then, your soul is blacker than I thought.”

  With that, Coop averts his gaze, like he can’t bear to look at someone so coldhearted. But by the tell-me-another-one look on Valerie’s face, I don’t think she’s buying it.

  Val can barely contain her laughter. “So this is a completely selfless act, then?”