“Mr. Abrams.”
A pause.
“Mr. Abrams.”
Longer pause.
“Colan.” From a different voice.
He jerked awake. “Yeah,
yeah what is it.”
“I can’t even describe how
rude what you’re doing is.”
Colan wiped his face and
resettled himself in his chair. “It wasn’t intentional I had a rough night last
night. I apologize.”
The four people at the
table stared at him.
“Please continue.” He
gestured loosely at the man speaking.
“So here is where the film
actually moves . . “
What movement Colan thought
to himself. Another horror film where
people disembody each other in horrific ways.
There is no movement in a film about brutal death. There is brutal death, a half to fully naked
chick and oh yeah a glorified psychopath.
Alfred Hitchcock knew what horror was.
It was an element of the mind. He
understood that what the human mind could imagine was much more horrific and
gruesome than what he could ever show on a screen. Even with today’s technology he would only
redefine darkness, horror, true terror.
He would create art. Film making
was an art. True film making, movie
making however was a tired racket. He
could always tell within the first 30 seconds of a pitch if he was talking to
an artist or a hack.
The horror flick being
pitched, “Until Dawn” was a movie, not a film.
The screenwriter had cobbled together the shock value factors of the
last 4 years of highest grossing horror movies and was selling them like they
were fresh stock. And because Colan was in the business he was in, he would
have to underwrite it and start production as soon as the hack was ready. Because he was not a film producer, he was a
movie producer and never should the two actually met.
If he had known that a
Bachelor’s from Berkeley and a Master’s from NYU would’ve gotten him here, he
would’ve saved the money. That way at
least he’d be like Paul sitting next to him, none wiser about the difference
between art and crap.
“You hear that Col, the
ending, it’s totally unique.”
“No it was done in
1976. It’s a variation on the original
ending of Carrie, the one they didn’t have the funds to do during that time
period, the one Stephen King actually wrote.” Colan corrected without really
thinking about it. He sat up straight.
“Bottom line, it’ll easily
be the Halloween blockbuster the year its’ released.” He paused as the pasty man’s excitement
started to fill the room. His partner nodding in agreement. It was always like this when he talked to
these guys. Had to be how music
producers felt about most rap styles that had nothing to do with the original
slam poetry and hip hop styles they so carelessly discarded yet have to thank
for their future success.
“Any plans for sequels?” He
asked carelessly.
The man grinned from ear to
ear. “Well I was trying to produce a stand alone but if the studio would like a
franchise I am more than willing to negotiate those terms.”
Colan stood. “Wonderful,
you and Paul here can hack it out. I mean hash it out.” He fixed Paul with a blank look. “In the
current media market we can shoot for 3 total, with a possible 4th
upon villain restructuring. Get me 2 in
the can in 28 months.”
Paul was taking notes and
nodding. Colan stared down at his
pristine bottle platinum blond locks carefully and artfully moussed and gelled
into hip spikes. Reflexively he ran his hand through his own shoulder length
blonde mane trying to remember the last time he’d even washed it with shampoo
and conditioned it. Felt pretty rough to
the touch.
“Done.” Paul confirmed and
looked suspiciously up at him with his dark brown eyes.
Colan smiled at the look of
suspicion. He was always wondering what
he was up to. What angle he was
playing. Wouldn’t he be surprised the
day he told him there never had been one. He turned and left the room.
Couldn’t blame Paul. That was the life. Movies made a lot of money, they also spent a
lot of money. Those two factors together
drew a certain kind of person. A land
shark. But there were levels of shark
and cannibalism was not only tolerated it was often encouraged. To reach the level and status that Colan had
reached required a lot of guilty memories.
Paul was just being careful because you never knew when one of those
beasts was going to turn on you.
Colan would’ve had a guy
like Paul for lunch eight years ago. He
had been without remorse when it came to getting to the top and being able to
call the shots. He had been a fool to
believe that being at the top of this industry would do anything but change his
priorities. People have this fantasy that once they get to the top of
something, they can just instantly change the entire institution and
structure. They think they have a noble
cause and noble goals.
Colan had been no
different. For most of his 36 years of life, films had sustained and carried
him. He would never forget his first
drive thru experience. His mother and
father had taken them to see something he thought he really wanted to see until
he turned around to look at another screen in the tri screen theatre. There he watched, without sound, Superman.
Shortly there after his father had left and he fell completely into the world
of moving pictures as his mother had to leave him to fend for himself as she
had to work more. So he watched movies,
every kind he could watch.
He was raised in a back
water Oklahoma town called Chandler right outside of Oklahoma City. When he had become high school age he had
talked his mother into letting him go to the best high school in the state
located in Norman Oklahoma near Oklahoma State University. There he had started the process to get into
the University of California Berkeley. From there he had gone to Tisch with New
York University with a 4.0.
Colan had graduated full of
zest, zeal and an appropriate amount of artistic angst and he had hit the
independent film scene a blaze. His
first three movies had been shot down instantly. The people he pitched to insisting that
America didn’t want to think, they wanted blood guts and senseless violence. He
had been unconvinced. The public took
what they could get. He was going to make films again.
All of his professors had
seen the idealist in him and knew what that meant. One by one over the years they had warned him
away from Hollywood. Make films overseas
first, he had been advised. But he had been a patriot. He had only wanted to give his creations to
American audiences first.
With the
choices being Disney and Hollywood, he had chosen the later.
So there he had gone. Hollywood was everything he thought it would
be and a slew of other things he hadn’t expected. He had expected to be disgusted to be
insulted as the art he loved was being canonized and mass produced without
thought or originality. What he hadn’t
expected was to be lured in by the potential of ultimate power. To be held
enwrapt by the bright lights the lifestyle, the parties, the drugs, the
sex. Some of those women he had met
along the way had been willing to do anything.
Anything at all for a shot. It isn’t until it’s much too late do you
realize what you had to become to get there.
But the most seductive lure
of it had been the competition. Being
better, doing better hopefully in a way that shows everyone how bad someone
else is at this job. Colan had started as a rigging grip. After 5 years of
wheeling and dealing, flaunting his degree, his good looks, and southern charm,
Colan Abrams from bumfuck Oklahoma and a broken home was the most sought after
movie producer in Hollywood. He had
gotten to be an assistant of a producer within a year and half of being in the
company. Produced his first film within
the next six months as the man he was working for cracked under the
pressure. Pressure Colan had eagerly and
liberally applied. That year he had turned a summer blockbuster that would’ve
fallen on its ass with the previous producer into a multi-billion dollar
worldwide hit.
The rules are simple for
success in Hollywood. Money is the name
of the game and the only resume item that’s respected. Rule one summer, you got
lucky, rule two summers, you might just have what it takes. Three summers followed by a killer Halloween
and an amazing Christmas showing, baby you’re a star.
Colan was a country boy at
the core of his being. And like any boy
not used to women that looked like Hollywood wanna be starlets did or men
willing to prostitute like Hollywood wanna be leading men did, he had lost his
way. He had been exposed to it during school, but it wasn’t the same. In the end, the purity of the art always held
him first and kept him focused. But with
the purity of the art gone, all that was left was this sickening people pulsing
floor show. When the lifestyle had
started not to be enough he was a little worried. When the drugs had started to not be enough,
his worry escalated. When the sex became
practically another form of currency he had started having full blown panic
attacks.
Two years ago Colan Abrams, multi billion dollar movie
producer, film company executive, and all around Hollywood behind the scenes
badass, had a nervous breakdown. And his
perception of the world had never been the same since.
