How It Ended: New and Collected Stories - By Jay McInerney Page 0,139
car, which was this four-door Maserati sedan. I didn't even know Maserati made sedans, but I figured Brode was too big to drive around in one of the sports models. On the drive out to the Valley, he spent most of the time on his car phone, but in between he listened as I pitched like crazy. Finally he said, “Instead of a writer, how about if this guy's an artist? We move the thing from Venice to San Francisco, and he's got a humongous studio filled with canvases—and right out the window he sees the couple screwing. The art thing's very hot right now, and this way we'll get a lot more visuals.” I don't know, I probably would've made him into a female impersonator. I was dying to get into the game, my savings were exhausted, my Subaru needed new brakes and I had yet to meet a girl who wanted to go out to dinner with an unemployed screenwriter. My ex-best friend had just written to say he and my ex-girlfriend were getting married and that he hoped I didn't have any hard feelings. After pretending to think deeply about Brode's suggestion for a minute, I said, “I like it. I think I could make it work.”
He dropped me at the gate of the soundstage and gave me a business card from a car service. “We'll work it out with your agent.” I stood around baking in the sun for an hour before the car finally came to take me back to the studio. That night I bought a bottle of Spanish bubbly, which I knocked back on the terrace while my neighbors traded orgasms.
I called Alexis in New York, and she told me that I was part of the big family. We talked for an hour, and for once I believe I matched her drink for drink. Then I thought about calling my old girlfriend, imagining her chagrin when she realized what she'd given up, but passed out instead.
“Martin, babe, I'm going to make you a rich man,” my agent told me a week later. She'd grown up on Long Island and had been out here only a couple years, but she talked just like something out of What Makes Sammy Run? They must give you a copy at LAX or something, I don't know why I never got mine.
The deal was two drafts, plus revisions at scale, which, if not a fortune, was more money than I'd made in a year at the newspaper. And I was thrilled to have a foot in the door. “Danny Brode's really big,” my agent said without a trace of irony. “That man is going places, and he can take you with him.”
“I don't feel like going to the fat farm,” I said.
“You better start watching your mouth around this town,” my agent said. “It's a small community, and if you want to be part of it, you've got to play by the rules. Bill Goldman and Bob Towne can afford to be smartasses, but you can't.”
“Could you send me a list of these rules?” I was so happy, I couldn't help being full of myself. The next week she took me to lunch at Spago and introduced me to several people she described as “important players,” calling me “Martin Brooks, the writer.”
Then I started writing the draft that would transform my hero into a painter. I flew up to San Francisco for atmosphere, talked to gallery owners and artists. Just dropping the studio's name opened doors, and I implied that a major star was interested in the lead. Back home I was able to get an interview with an LAPD narcotics detective, who filled me in on the inner workings of the drug cartels.
Ten weeks after the papers were signed, I handed in my new draft. The next day I got a FedEx package with Danny Brode's card attached to a bottle of Cristal. Only his name—no title, studio, address or phone number—was printed on the card. Danny Brode. No need to wear a tie around here. Anyway, drinking that bottle of Cristal was the high point of the whole experience.
The hangover set in a couple weeks later, when my agent called. “Basically they're thrilled with the script. Ecstatic. But they want to talk to you about a couple of little changes.”
“No problem,” I said. “We're contracted for two drafts, right? I mean, I make another ten grand or so for a rewrite.”