9/05/2011 Freeloading

There are a lot of producers in L.A. and some of them actually have money.  Heather was one of those who didn’t, but she worked for one who did, a Hungarian gentleman who specialized in made for television movies of the week.  I wasn’t a movie-of-the-week practitioner, but, like I said, the man had money so Heather had some of my scripts in development for the guy.  She also represented me on a number of other screenplays, so whenever I commuted to L.A. for any length of time, I usually stayed at her place.  She had a house in Van Nuys on a tree-shrouded block off of Sherman Way and Woodward with an extra bedroom, and I got along with the dogs, so as long as she thought my scripts were worth schlepping, I was a welcome guest. 

(Note to writers hawking their wares in cities where entertainment is big business: find a producer or director who can help you with sleeping arrangements.  There’s nothing more disheartening than hunkering down in some motel flipping through the limited selection of stations that are free while you wait for people to return your calls.  It’s much better to be spending time with the person who is promoting you, even if they have to listen to you snore.  Suddenly you’re family and you go from being a pest abusing your phone privileges to the person who, as he pours himself a cup of coffee, casually says, “So what do you think I should do with my zombie romantic comedy?”  Commuting to New York, I stayed with Luke Sosa, a director, in a dark section of Brooklyn down under the Manhattan Bridge more commonly known as “Dumbo.”  With that arrangement, since Luke was helping an Off-Broadway theater owner convert a block of brick row houses into condos, I had an entire floor to myself.) 

The night I returned from the Cat and Fiddle after having drinks with Wendy and Des, Heather was still up after having hosted a meeting with the board of directors of a Hollywood theater company.  She was bustling about straightening up the dining room table when I walked through the door.  Although this was the 90s, Heather, in her mid-thirties, had 80s big hair, a curly brunette mane that fanned out and glorified her head like a Louis XIV wig.  (I was amazed at how much time she spent drying it in the morning.)  My vote was still out on whether her lavishly sprung curls made her more, or less, attractive.  She had dark eyes and a large aquiline nose and a light-skinned body that bordered on voluptuous, a little too thick in the calves, a little to wide in the hips, but fit, so that when she dressed to impress she could show off an hourglass figure.  (In Louis B. Mayer’s day he would have chased her around the desk; now the execs would look at her and think to themselves, “If only she were a bit taller…”)  So maybe the fluffy hyacinthine hair gave top balance to a wide-beamed body, but sometimes when the moisture in the air was low, or she had frazzled her way through a trying day, the curls lost their bounce and hung, like drooping dreadlocks, close to her face making it more square, less feminine, so that it looked like she was a beleaguered drag queen.

Tonight the hair was springy, so the board meeting must not have been too acrimonious.  (There had, a couple of years earlier, been a firing of the executive director and a reforming of the theater company.)  Since Heather had been the one who first made contact with El Duce’s wife and pimped my script for his direction, she was eager to find out how my negotiations with him were progressing.  Chewing on leftover pizza, I gave her the update.  “We sent him the screenplay this afternoon.”

“Who’s he going to contact?”

“The office.”

Giving me a cold stare, Heather flounced into the kitchen.  “You should have given him my number.”

“Des says he can get the money.”

“Get isn’t have,” she shouted out over the water she was running into the sink.  “Until then,” she added, shutting the water off, “you need to spread your bets.”

Another thing about producers: they have little trust for each other.  So if you’re working with one, and staying with the other, life can be very difficult.