Chapter 35
I reach for my glass of lemon water and sip to a polite round of applause.
I’ve pitched rooms where buyers have stared me down in furrowed-brow silence, where the head of drama originals at [redacted] once dozed off.
I’ll take a seated ovation any day of the week over that, but it is no guarantee an offer will follow.
“So many twists and turns, Faye.”
“How do you even come up with something like that?”
“I blushed.”
“Speaking of, is your vision for this full-frontal nudity?”
“Wow, Claire, diving right in.”
“Ask me to dinner first,” I say cornily, and everyone laughs.
I let it die, tune my voice to the one I use when we get to the questions and comments portion of the pitch.
I turn to Claire, who is the head of mid-budget indie development and wears the thick-framed reading glasses to prove it.
“I’m not opposed to full frontal, but I also don’t want to get slapped with an NC-17 rating. ”
“It’s the kiss of death,” she agrees, and I know which film she is thinking about when she says this.
“I want this to be as erotic as it can be while remaining extremely commercial.”
“What I love about female directors,” someone says, “is that they’re not afraid of that word.”
Then hire me, I think. Pay me a fraction of what you would pay a man. Save my career.
“Can you tell us a little bit about where this idea came from?” someone else asks carefully.
I am sitting at the head of a sterile conference table in the villainous glass headquarters of a global streamer, facing six executives of various rank and file.
Each one, in their own way, stops what they are doing to hear my answer to this question.
Phones turned over on their faces, Stanley cups down.
Outside, strong, dry winds yank the palm trees west. This morning, when I woke, I was prepared to hear from my agent that today’s pitch would need to be rescheduled.
But here I am, begging like a dog to write, direct, and star in my next film, red-flag warning be damned.
“Well,” I say. “The answer to that is kind of a two-parter.” I tell them that back in the spring, my beloved film professor passed away from a heart attack, and his nephew, a former classmate and friend of mine, asked if I would speak at his memorial.
“Campbell?”
I smile. “Yes. ‘Campbell.’ ” It was the first time I had returned to campus since graduating twelve years ago. It was the first time I was going to see a lot of people I hadn’t seen since before I won an Emmy for the episode of television I wrote about my ex-boyfriend.
“I gasped when Campbell showed up at the lake,” says the content associate with the slicked-back ponytail.
“Don’t worry,” I assure her. “As we speak Campbell is safe in Connecticut, doing whatever it is annoyingly perfect husbands and fathers do there.”
“What about ‘Corrine’?”
“Ice-cold bitch, but not a murderer as far as I know.”
Some light laughter.
“But in regards to ‘Henry,’ ” Claire says, all business. “What was real there? He was at the funeral, I assume?”
“With his wife and kids.”
Claire doesn’t take her eyes off me. “What happened?”
“Just like I said. We were briefly under the same roof. We saw each other in passing. Then one of his daughters had a tantrum during the slideshow. He left. We never even said hello.”
“I see. So everything after that. That’s where we leave reality.”
“Reality,” I repeat with a laugh. I gather myself to get into it.
“Well. As you know. My husband and I have decided to end our marriage and dissolve our production company. Initially, people were shocked but generally supportive. They liked us as a couple, and we seemed so good together, what could have happened? Our goal was to separate amicably, but then we couldn’t work out who got ownership of our biggest piece of IP, and that’s when my husband hired a crisis PR team and the rumors began to circulate online.
Obviously, I cannot prove who is behind them.
But those are the verifiable facts.” I take a beat.
Sip my sour water. “There’s no use sitting here pretending like it hasn’t affected me, both from a bottom-line perspective and on a deeply personal level.
It hurts to be lied about, to be misunderstood, and the story of Faye and Henry—‘Henry’—and what happened at the lake is my response to that. ”
“Absolutely,” someone agrees noncommittally.
“Let us have a chat, and we’ll get back to you,” says Claire, her poker face pleasant. I thank everyone for their time.