Chapter 10
I was woken up the next morning by a phone ringing. Not my phone. The hotel phone. “Hello?”
“Good morning, Mr. Laramie. I’ve got Brian Arawas here to see you.”
I brushed my teeth, put on a Mekons T-shirt and yesterday’s jeans, and began the long journey down to the lobby.
The sun was brighter than seemed necessary.
Brian Arawas was standing outside waiting for me in the narrow shade of a palm tree.
He wore Ray-Bans, a neatly trimmed beard, and a close-cropped haircut that appeared to be less than a day old.
Arawas had been an actor before he’d become a director, and although his hair was graying, he still looked fit and handsome, and also aware of being fit and handsome.
“Kai,” he said as he approached, arms out.
We hugged. There is a lot of hugging in Hollywood.
“Kai, I apologize for being one hour and eighteen minutes early for our breakfast, but I am a punctual person, and an enthusiastic one, and I literally couldn’t wait to meet you. Where should we eat?”
“I don’t really know Los Angeles,” I said.
“Amazing. Never get to know it. Stay gold, Ponyboy. You’re a New Yorker, right?”
“I’m mostly from Indiana.”
“Well, no one’s perfect,” he said, smiling out of the corner of his mouth. “We’ll go to the Algernon.”
_____
In the car, a silver Audi A8 with a white leather interior, I told Brian that I’d loved his last movie, a one-off film in the X-Men universe about a mission to free mutants from a prison camp.
“Yeah,” he said, “we basically got to remake The Great Escape but with superheroes. We had an awesome time. The studio watered down the political message of the film, but that’s Hollywood.
They all love freedom and democracy until they want to sell a movie internationally, and then we have to respect that many forms of government can be legitimate. Have you read the book yet?”
“Most of it,” I said. I tried to say something about how much I liked the character I’d auditioned for, but I just rambled.
I said that Garon reminded me of me, which wasn’t really true.
He mostly reminded me of other scribes from other fantasy stories.
Brian nodded, but didn’t say anything in response, and I wondered if I’d ruined my shot at the part before we even got to the restaurant.
We turned onto Sunset Boulevard, where traffic was crawling.
“You see that new Tarantino film, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“All of Quentin’s films are about wish fulfillment, and that one imagines the most wish fulfillmenty alternate history of them all—a world in which there is no traffic in Los Angeles. Is Garon really the character you most identify with in the story?”
“No,” I said.
“I didn’t think so. Who is?”
“Gavinth,” I said. Queen Agrippah’s husband.
Brian nodded. “You know, I’ve talked to probably forty actors about that role, and not one of them has pronounced Gavinth’s name correctly, until you.” I started to tell him that was only because I was listening to the book rather than reading it, but stopped myself.
“I just love how he supports his Queen, and really believes in all the rules of Andromeda, but still wants power, you know? And I like his turn. Like, I think he really loves her, but he also knows that loving her is a way to be close to her, and being close to her is a way to have a say in whether the war happens.”
“Yes,” Brian said. “Yes. Each character explores a human journey in the story, and Gavinth shows us how people travel from the power of love to the love of power.” Brian paused as he pulled into a parking lot, and then said, “I don’t want to create false expectations.
I love what you’re saying about Gavinth, but I see you as a Garon.
” I nodded, and said something to the effect that I saw myself as a Garon as well.
_____
The Algernon was a breakfast joint, and we were immediately seated outside, on a small patio next to the restaurant’s parking lot.
Brian recommended I order something called Today’s Harvest, so I did.
It was basically sliced avocado and tomato drizzled with red wine vinegar, only it cost thirty-seven dollars.
One thing that bothers me about Los Angeles is its complete lack of self-awareness.
Like a baby that doesn’t know there’s anything weird about shitting in a diaper, Los Angeles doesn’t know there’s anything weird about charging thirty-seven dollars for an avocado.
Brian was waxing extremely poetic about the book.
“In the film I want to make, Garon’s journey charts perhaps the most important question in the movie: How does a tool become a weapon?
Think about the stone axe, for instance.
It was likely first used as a tool, but at some point it came to be used as a weapon.
In both cases, the stone axe was powerful, but as a weapon, it became an instrument with which to enforce power, right? ”
“And that’s Garon’s pen,” I said.
“THAT IS GARON’S PEN,” Brian answered, smacking the stone top of our little table.
“It starts out as the tool through which laws and decrees travel from the court to the people, and then it becomes a metaphorical weapon, when Garon writes the declaration of war against the orcs, and then it becomes a literal weapon of war when it is melted into the handle of his sword. Yes. Yes. You totally get this, Kai. You get the journey. I feel like we are already on the journey together. Do you feel that?”
“Uh, yeah,” I said. “Totally.”
“But the real question,” Brian said, “is how can the weapon journey back to being a tool. Having opened the Pandora’s box of violence, how do we return to a state of peace? And that’s why in the sequels, I think we will see Garon struggling with his sword, both literally and metaphorically.”
“There are sequels?”
“Oh, yes, Valentina has a trilogy planned. The second one is mostly finished, and I’ve seen the outline for the third. I don’t want to spoil Garon’s journey for you, but in the end, he is once more holding a pen.”
“Sounds cool,” I said. “Yeah, I love that arc.”
A young woman had come up to our table. “Excuse me,” she said. I figured she was excited to meet the brilliant Brian Arawas, but she was looking at me. “Are you the guy who saved Juniper Castillo last night?”
“I don’t know about saved, but—”
“Oh my God. It’s so cool to meet you. I thought that was so awesome, seriously. I just wanted to say thanks.”
“Yeah, sure,” I said, and then she asked Brian Arawas if he could take a picture of us, which Brian did.
“I didn’t know you were such a star already,” Brian said, and I briefly explained that we’d just had a weird night, and then he returned to the movie.
“Tell me about your familiarity with swords,” he said, and I laughed a little, because I thought he was kidding, but he wasn’t.
Again, the baby doesn’t know it’s weird to shit in a diaper.
“Um, limited,” I said. I remembered Matthew telling me about how when he got to the last round of auditions for a surfing movie, they asked him if he could surf, and he said, “Of course I can surf. I’m Matthew Malone,” even though he’d never been surfing in his life and wasn’t even a very good swimmer.
“I’ve got a dance background,” I said, “and swordfighting is mostly dancing.”
“I love it,” Brian said. “I love that. I’m stealing that. The way you move in Andy Warhol Never Gets Old is positively spellbinding.”
I swallowed a bite of avocado and said, “Thanks, yeah. That was a great part.” My stomach was turning a little. “Juniper’s so good in it, isn’t she?”
“Ah, yes, the studio’s favorite Agrippah,” he said. “What was she like to work with?”
“Amazing. She’s so prepared. She is just, like, incredibly competent and professional and brilliant and most of all just very, like, ready. You never have to worry with her.”
“My only concern is that she’s too prepared, perhaps.
So studied that at times she may lack that improvisational spark, the range that comes with being open to all the moment may bring.
She’s more of a Bach than a Beethoven, if you catch my meaning.
I tend to be most deeply attracted to Beethovens. ” I did not catch his meaning.
“I really like her,” I said. “I think she’s got spark.”
“You’re certainly wonderful collaborators, although of course I’m sure you understand that there are many great actors interested in Garon.”
“Of course,” I said. “I’m sure you’ll find the right person.”
“Well, hopefully this week we’ll have you in for chemistry reads. The tool to the weapon, Kai. That’s what I hope you’ll hold in your heart.”
“Right,” I said. “Yeah, definitely. Thanks for breakfast; it’s so cool to meet you.”
“It is very cool to meet you as well,” he said.
_____
The ride back to the hotel was a little awkward; the conversation had ended, but now it had to continue for another twenty minutes.
We arrived at last, and he got out of the car to hug me and told me he would love to work with me, and I said that yeah of course I would love to work with him, too, and then I was walking back to my room when I saw Bob and Zoe sitting at a table outside the Bel-Air’s restaurant.
“Kai!” he shouted. “Funny seeing you here.”
Bob pulled me into a hug. “How was it? How was it?” He was a large man—not fat so much as large in every direction. He wore a suit, highly tailored. Nobody looks more like themselves than an agent.
“It was good, I think,” I answered as I shook Zoe’s hand. Zoe shook hands instead of hugging, and wore her hair pulled back into a tight ponytail, and I liked her because her face never revealed much.
“So what’d ya think of him?” Bob asked as we sat down at the table. A waiter appeared, and I asked for a cup of coffee.
“Um, I thought…I don’t know. He’s kind of pretentious.”
“Well, he’s a director.”
“I guess.”
“Brian’s a genius, and like most geniuses, he knows it.”
Zoe looked at her phone. “Apparently you’re all over the Internet today, Kai. You beat up a paparazzo?”
“No, a guy tried to get in Juniper’s car, and I…ensured he did not get in.”
“So you’re a hero.”
“I don’t know about that.” My phone buzzed. I glanced down at it. Ellen. Call me.
“So Brian,” Bob said.
“Yeah, I mean, I like his movies obviously. And it’s a big movie, I guess.”
“Speaking of which, I’m trading calls with business affairs at the studio, but it looks like around two hundred thousand up front, with a little on the back end.”
“Is that good?”
“We’re gonna try to get them up to two fifty, but they’re always gonna lowball us.
There are a thousand eager young actors they could cast, and they know that and we know that.
So you want the role because it’s a good role, not because it’ll make you rich.
” Two hundred thousand dollars seemed rich to me.
“Okay,” I said.
“So you want to sign the test deal,” Bob said. “Assuming we can get it to two fifty.”
“I guess,” I said. “The book is good, but the script is pretty, uh, generic. I worry it’s just another action movie, you know?”
“It’s just another action movie made by the guy whose previous action movies have generated a combined billion-with-a-b in international box office, a guy who literally makes stars for a living.
Tom Calloway can’t act his way out of a fucking parking ticket, and he’s the fucking face of Armani because of Brian Arawas.
Kai, you pay me to give you advice, and my advice is that Gods of Agamemnon is going to blow up, and you can blow up with it.
Honestly, with the amount of money the studio is putting behind this thing, it could be directed by a goddamned robot trained by watching Transformers movies and still turn a profit. ”
“Andromeda,” Zoe said.
“Right. The title is a fucking problem. You and shitty movie titles, Kai, name a better combination.” He belly laughed.
“I guess I should do it.”
“You should,” Zoe said.
“Zoe’s right,” Bob said, which is when it occurred to me that Zoe had never been at any of the previous coffees or dinners or lunches I’d had with Bob.
She’d always greeted me at the agency, walked me back to Bob’s office, asked if I wanted anything to drink, chatted with me until he was available, and then disappeared.
I wondered if she’d gotten some sort of minor promotion or if she was just here to convince me to sign the test deal.
“So if I say yes and I get the part, I have to take it, right?”
“You don’t have to do anything. You want us to get you out of it, we’ll get you out of it.
But yes, broadly speaking, you’re agreeing to a deal that you will take in the event that you get the part.
Again, though, nothing’s set in stone right now.
” Zoe reached into her bag and produced the contract.
“This is written with you getting two fifty,” Bob said, “in the hopes that they’ll just be like, well, fuck, he already signed this one; we might as well give him the extra fifty grand so we don’t have to bother with more paperwork. ”
“Seriously?”
“I’ll appeal to their fear, and they’ll make the deal. They always do, if they’re afraid. Fear runs this town. Fear that someone else will get the thing that is so special, so unprecedented, so once-in-a-lifetime.”
“And in this case, that thing is me?”
“That thing is fucking you, kid.”
“Plus,” Zoe said, “you’re famous for saving Juniper’s life last night.”
“I didn’t—” I started, but Bob had thrust the contract at me, so I didn’t say anything; I just signed it.