even the spokesman for the EPA. As if they’d been coached, they each said the same thing: they’d decided to withdraw their support for the movie. If he insisted on running their likeness in his film or promotional materials, they’d sue.
At first he’d argued—permission is permission, you can’t rescind it. Then he’d pleaded, because no matter what contracts they’d signed, if they wanted, they could tie the movie up in the courts for years. Finally, after call number eighteen, which he’d taken while literally lying between the starched sheets of the Comfort Inn’s double bed, he’d given up. By this morning, more than half his interviews had backed out, and out of the ones who’d stayed, only three were worth keeping. Not enough for a movie. Not even enough for a commercial.
“I don’t get people,” Saraub said, not so much to Wilson, as to the back of the seat ahead of him. “Some of these guys contacted me. They wanted to talk. They thought they were doing the right thing. What could change that?”
Wilson shrugged, and Saraub could tell that a part of him was enjoying this because it proved his cynicism. “Some asshole you don’t know from a hole in the wall, but whose boss is one of the main targets of your movie, buys your movie. Two days later half the people in the movie drop out. This is not rocket science. They used all your notes to contact your subjects and showed them some green.”
“I can’t believe they’d go to the trouble,” Saraub said.
“You fight city hall, city hall buries you,” Wilson said, then took a slug from the canary yellow Rheingold Beer can he’d filched from the service tray upon boarding the plane. It smelled bad, and Saraub decided that there were greater sins than taking up too much room in a seat; you could be Wilson.
“Three years of my life, all for nothing. I can’t believe this is happening,” he said. He wasn’t just thinking of the movie, but of Audrey, and his white picket fence dreams that he’d been so foolish to dream.
Wilson half snorted, half laughed. The sound was too loud for public, and the woman in the row ahead turned around and glared. “Don’t play innocent. You pissed on ’em! Of course they came after you. You want the government to start regulating multinationals, and you’re pissing off the coal lobby, the oil lobby, and the big farmers who get subsidized irrigation while you’re at it. Servitus has fifty legal eagles on the payroll to deal with guys like you.”
“But it’s not like any of the footage is a revelation. Everybody knows we’re drilling faster than makes sense,” Saraub said.
Wilson shook his head. “Hear no evil. See no evil. If nobody has to think about it, it’s not happening. This is America, kiddo. Not Calcutta.”
Saraub frowned. The baby boomer generation; how quickly they’d turned. “It’s not right,” he said. “I’m not letting them get away with it, either. I’m running the footage as is. I don’t care what they do.” Even as he said it, he knew the threat was empty: he was screwed.
Wilson burped again. He’d been out drinking last night, and was still half in the bag. With the five o’clock shadow and oil-stained denim tuxedo he was sporting, he looked a lot like Ted Kaczynski, which explained why, for once, it was the white guy, and not Saraub, who’d been interrogated and searched at the gate before boarding. If you hate firing people so much, you should just hand him a pink piece of paper the next time he shows up to work drunk, Audrey had once teased. Let him figure it out.
“Hey! Maybe it’s got nothing to do with the movie. They just don’t like you,” Wilson said.
“Thanks,” Saraub answered.
“A lot of you not to like.” Wilson chuckled in a mean way and didn’t bother to hide that he meant it mean.
Saraub sighed, thought about answering, then decided to look out the window instead. Four Air Canada 727s lumbered gracelessly through the storm and down the runway like dinosaur birds.
He could have hired a studio man two years ago, but instead he’d gone with Wilson, who didn’t need to be told when to move in for a close-up and intuitively understood the effects of light and shade. On the other hand, there was a reason Wilson had gone from Hollywood movies to television commercials to now, the lowest of the low, documentaries. He was often late and always