Heartland (20 page)
“But?”
Gish hesitated, then, “What if he changes his mind?”
Milo's tone was hardened by years of clinching Hollywood deals. “You told us this was exactly the sort of offer Dawes would want, Leo. And the timing is yours. Not ours.”
“Leo isn't trying to welsh on us,” Allerby soothed. “He's just expressing a valid concern. Isn't that right, Leo.”
“Dawes is so secretive,” Gish fretted. “I've seen him pull out of deals I'd have called perfect. Done it seated at the table with the signing pen in his hand.”
Milo was ready to crawl across the table and cram himself into the lawyer's face. “That can't happen.”
“It can,” Gish replied. “It has.”
A cloud descended over their table, one dark enough to obliterate the street theater.
Then Martin felt lightning strike. He leaned forward. “What you're saying, Leo, is we need a sweetener. Something that would push Dawes over the edge.”
Milo knew his partner well enough to say, “You've got an idea.”
“How about this.” Martin lowered his voice to a point where the two men had to crane forward to hear. “We move the
Heartland
piece from a TV special to a feature film.”
Milo gaped. “What?”
“Three times I approached Dawes about moving into features. Three times he told me the exact same thing. Do it with
Heartland
or not at all.”
“We ran the numbers,” Milo pointed out. “It would have been a total disaster.”
“Exactly.”
“A full-on failure of that scale would cost us our careers.”
“Which is why we haven't moved forward,” Allerby agreed. “Until now.”
Gish looked from one man to the other. “You lost me.”
“Think about it, Leo.” Spelling it out for all three of them. “We contact Dawes. No. Wait. Even better, you tell him we've met here tonight. That way, if he ever catches wind of this meeting, you can say it was because we wanted to move forward on the film concept. Maybe he's heard about our new JayJay Parsons, the hero.”
“He has. Believe me. He spent half our conference talking about that instead of the will.”
“There you go. So Milo and I, we've had a change of heart. We want to ride this wildfire publicity onto the silver screen.”
“Perfect.” Milo breathed the word. “Starring an actor who's never seen the front end of a camera before.”
“Two actors,” Allerby corrected. “You're forgetting the new leading lady, Kelly Channing. Her last role was smiling for mouthwash. Or gum. Something memorable.”
“It'll be a total mess.” Milo's grin displayed rows of overly small teeth. “We might as well put the cash in a wheelbarrow and push it across the street to the park.”
Leo asked, “You guys
want
this to fail?”
“In the biggest way possible. You get Dawes to sign off on this feature film he's always wanted to see happen. We set the project in motion. We'll gear up our PR for a major push.”
“Then we'll watch the press write up what a total catastrophe Centurion has on its hands,” Milo said. “Meanwhile, I'll be out there trying to pitch a film that nobody in their right mind would dream of buying.”
“And this mystery group, who are based in a world far removed from
Variety
and
Hollywood Reporter
, will keep their offer on the table.”
Gish saw it now. “Dawes would be desperate to sign.”
“Exactly,” Allerby agreed.
“I got to hand it to you,” Milo said. “This is a stroke of genius.”
Leo Gish leaned back in his seat. For the first time that night, he looked happy. “You know what this means?”
“Yes, Leo,” Allerby replied. Able to give the man at least one dream come true. “You're about to become a Hollywood player.”
T
he setting sun glared through Martin Allerby's office window, drenching the chamber and the people in gold. A good DP would have paid with blood for such a shot. Every face was painted in big-screen accuracy. Milo Keplar, his sales director and secret partner in crime, was seated in his preferred corner from which he could observe and calculate. Two senior staffers from Contracts and one from Legal occupied the ring of chairs around Martin's desk. There to warn them of any potential speed bumps. Britt Turner shared the sofa with his diminutive AD. Gloria, Allerby's assistant, was in her standard position with laptop at the ready.
The stage, as they said in the biz, was prepped. It was time for action. There would be no second take.
Martin asked, “How are things going with the shoot?”
“So far, pretty solid.” Britt was understandably nervous. He had been summoned back to headquarters on a moment's notice. The phone call from Gloria had arrived about a half hour before the limo to take him to the local airport, where a flying taxi waited to speed him south. No reason given. Just come. “We've rehearsed all the scenes Peter has completed so far. We've gone over some of the connecting action. I like what he's writing.”
“And Derek?”
“He's working out well.”
“He's young for a DP role on location.”
“He's thirty-three. Seven years' experience. He started in ads like most cameramen these days. Took a serious cut in salary to come on board here as assistant cameraman.” Britt scanned the faces. “Is that what we're here about? You're naming another DP?”
“Do you think we should?”
Britt shifted nervously in his seat. His AD might as well have been frozen solid. Not even his eyes moved. “It's your show, Martin.”
“I'm just asking your opinion.”
“Then no, I don't think a change is called for. The dailies we gained from his one day in the saddle on set were solid.”
“That was here. Soundstage and location shooting are two different animals.”
“We've been on location for nine days. I've been watching him carefully as we work the sets and light the scenes.” Britt had difficulty controlling the timber of his voice. “He's blocked out the scene work and laid the lights and cables so we can move from rehearsals to shooting without any lost time. And done it all without a word from me. He's got the makings of a solid professional.”
“Then he stays.” Allerby watched his director breathe a fraction easier. Britt Turner was in his early fifties, which in Hollywood terms meant he was as good as cremated. He had a dead-straight style of composition that worked well with this kind of story and character. And this kind of medium. Television viewers might not be able to say it in words, but their viewing habits were dominated by straight-ahead stories. Shallow characters, easy plots, nothing that challenged or strayed far from the program's principal task of delivering the audience to the next commercial. Allerby studied the director and watched his tension increase. Fear was such an exquisite tool in the hands of a master. “It's good to see you defend your personnel, Britt.”
“Is that it?”
“No.” Allerby rose from his chair. His desk was positioned close enough to the center of the room for him to be able to pace easily. The region between his chair and the rear wall was his own little stage. “There's been a change of plan.”
“About the special?”
“From this point on, there is no special.” He let the moment stretch until he was certain the diminutive AD was going to shriek like the whistle of a steam train. Kip Denderhoff's features were that tight. When it was either speak or watch his employees explode, Martin stopped pacing and declared, “We're going to make a feature film.”
The AD actually squeaked. The rest of the room made do with a swift indrawn breath. No one knew anything except, of course, for Milo. Even Gloria gasped.
Britt had gone pasty. “For real?”
“Last night I received confirmation from Carter Dawes' attorney. The financing is in place.
Heartland
is headed to the big screen.” He returned to his pacing. “PR and Milo's division will both use the angle that a new star has restored the show's original polish. He's been shown across the nation saving two people from the wildfire. We have received more publicity from those shots your DP took than we could have bought with our entire annual PR budget.”
“Fox News is still running the tape as part of their thirty-second intro,” Milo added.
“People
is naming him one of the year's sexiest men,” Allerby said. “I just got that from PR.”
Martin Allerby could hear the director's mental gears grind from across the room. Like everyone who had ever immigrated to Hollywood, Britt Turner had always yearned to make the leap to film. But if his chance had ever come, he had missed out. Timing, ability, right script, right meeting, whatever. A thousand things must come together in the correct order to build the impossible bridge from television to dreamland. Only one item needed to go wrong. But in Britt's case, Allerby suspected it was simply a matter of talent. Britt Turner was made for the tiny screen. Martin inspected the man, and knew his initial judgment had been sound. Britt Turner was going to take this chance and fail.
Allerby said, “I'm absolutely confident you and your team are going to triumph.”
Britt swallowed audibly. “What's our budget?”
“Twelve million.”
Allerby glanced at Milo. They had argued for six days before settling on the amount. Twelve million dollars was no-man's land. Television topped out at two and a half million dollars for an hour of absolute top-drawer television miniseries drama. Which
Heartland
definitely was not. Five to eight million dollars was tops for an indie feature or art-house release. These days a feature from a major studio started at forty mil. With another twelve to fourteen on top for marketing. Call it fifty-five mil as a bare minimum. The
average
studio feature cost ninety-seven million dollars to make and market.
Twelve million dollars for a feature was a neither-here-nor-there budget. It fit into none of the standard calculations. It was doomed from the outset.
“That's the absolute maximum we were able to obtain from Dawes and the board,” Allerby warned. “Don't come back and ask for more, because there won't be any.”
They spent four hours discussing issues that would have been vital if there was any chance whatsoever of success. Gloria's deal memo alone ran to nineteen pages. When they were done, Britt and his AD rose from the chairs like automatons whose batteries had died. Dull-eyed, stiff, barely able to make the door. Allerby personally ushered everyone out, repeating several times to make sure the entire stunned group had it embedded in the memory banks for posterity. “I am absolutely certain you folks are going to bring back a triumph on film.”
Milo waited until they were in Allerby's Volkswagen and out the Centurion gates to say, “We might as well pile the old man's money on the pavement and set it on fire.”
T
he hotel's inner-facing rooms overlooked a grassy courtyard, garden, and a little pool area. But there was no view of the sunset, so JayJay and Kelly had gone out front and climbed up onto the cab roof of one of the lighting trucks. Like they were up in the high-range country instead of stuck in a hotel parking lot with trucks rumbling down the blacktop. The day had been the first they hadn't worked themselves to exhaustion, what with Britt and Kip called back to the studio. Up until then, these television folks on location had worked farmer's hours, dawn to dusk and long beyond. Come quitting time, JayJay hadn't had much interest in anything more than dinner and bed. Until today.
The sunset turned the world into a fairyland so sweet even the passing truckers were caught up. The highway drifted out of town and ran straight to where the first set of hills took hold and rose up to meet the golden sky. Neighboring orchards blanketed them in sweet fruitiness. Kelly waved at passing freighters and got honks and sunburned arms lifted in response.
It was not until the light began fading that they noticed the strangeness. The windows fronting the highway revealed film crew locked in worry and fret. When they walked back into the courtyard, they found the same thing in one room after another. Derek stood looking at a grease-board with his arms wrapped around his body. Every once in a while he'd unclench himself long enough to reach up and grab two fistfuls of hair and tug. In the room next to Derek's, the lady who played JayJay's sister smoked and paced and argued into a cell phone. Room after room showed the same air of tense concern.
It seemed natural enough when Kelly said, “We ought to do something.”
The computer screen in front of Peter was empty. He had typed nothing for hours. A script ran in the mental space behind his eyes. One he could not use. But it was all he could think of just then.
INT. PETER'S MOTEL ROOM. EVENING.
Peter is working at his desk. The motel room is flooded with the remnants of a desert sunset, his seventh since arriving on location. His room is located in an upmarket small-town hotel: plush carpet, one wall of stone, two beds, sofa, two easy chairs, desk, huge television, one window, view of the interior courtyard and pool. His laptop is angled so the screen is shaded from the sunset. He does not want to pull the curtains because the isolation becomes too great.
The mirror over his desk is lost behind hundreds of sticky-notes. The near bed has become an extension of his desk. As has the coffee table and one of the chairs and the sofa. Scribbled concepts and hundreds of notecards are laid out in a possible shooting sequence. Sheets of white drawing paper are taped to the motel wall, forming a fifteen-foot-long timeline.
Peter turns his chair away from the desk and the laptop. He looks across the room.
CLOSE-UP. PETER'S BEDSIDE TABLE. EVENING.
On the table rest two pictures. One is of CYNTHIA, Peter's wife. The other is a sonogram of two babies locked together in a uterine embrace.