Invisible(39)
“You’re crazy. I would do anything to be in one of his films. I want to see it when it comes out,” Jake said fervently, and she promised to go with him. She had never seen the dailies of the clip, and didn’t care.
* * *
—
Six weeks after school started, there was a wave of excitement at the Tisch School of the Arts. Brian Kelly, the major Hollywood producer, was coming to give a lecture on filmmaking, and creating blockbuster movies in particular. Everyone wanted to attend, even the purists who wanted to make independent films when they graduated were curious.
Hundreds of students crowded into the auditorium to hear him. Jake and Antonia went together, but they couldn’t find seats together. She wound up in the only seat left in the front row, and Jake was fifteen rows behind her. Kelly was a powerfully built man of medium height with broad shoulders in his early fifties, with about five Oscars to his credit. No one could deny his success.
His lecture was powerful too. He was a bulldog of a man, and one could easily sense that nothing could stop him in the creative process. He didn’t have the finesse of Hamish Quist, but he was impressive nonetheless. He was emphatic in his speech and told them to let nothing stop them, to fight for everything they believed in, and to never sacrifice the integrity of their films. They gave him a standing ovation, and before he left the stage, he randomly picked ten students to come backstage and meet him. He apologized that he didn’t have time for Q and A from the whole audience. Antonia was startled when he picked her, and she hurried onstage with the other nine students to go backstage to meet him personally. It was an exciting moment and one of the appealing things about Tisch was that they got to meet some very important directors, producers, screenwriters, playwrights, and actors. Brian Kelly was a huge deal in Hollywood.
Antonia wound up at the end of the line of students, as the others shoved her and pushed her away. They left as soon as they had spoken to him. They were meeting him in a dressing room used for their school plays. By the time it was her turn, they were alone in the dressing room. Since he said he was in a hurry, she phrased her question to him quickly.
“How can you tell when the material is right for a successful film? What determines that? What criteria do you use?” It was a valid question and she was startled when he laughed at her, in a raucous, derisive way. He had a rough voice, and a blunt style of delivery, but he got his points across.
“It’s a crapshoot. How can I tell when a pretty woman is going to give me a blow job or not when I ask her to? You’re a beautiful girl, so what do you say? How about it, sweetheart? If you do it right, I come pretty fast.” As he said it, he locked the dressing room door behind him, and made a swift move toward her. He cupped her breasts for an instant, and then grabbed her crotch hard, and then with surprising strength, he forced her down on her knees with both his hands on her shoulders, then unzipped his fly, and released his erect penis in her face. It all happened so fast, Antonia didn’t know what had hit her. He gave himself a quick rub to keep it hard, as she stood up and backed away from him, staying near the door as she did. She hadn’t expected anything like this, and he was so crude about it. He made no attempt to put it back in when he saw the shocked look on her face.
“Look, I can make things easy for you. You want to struggle here for four years with a lot of boring half-assed professors who’ve never succeeded at anything, or do you want the fast track to success? Make me happy and I’ll get you a part in any movie you want. You’ll be in Hollywood by next week for a screen test, and with your looks, you’ll be a star in no time. I can make that happen for you with one phone call. So what’s a little blow job between friends?”
“I don’t want a part in a movie,” she said with the strongest voice she could muster. She was shaking in fear and anger. What if this was like Jeff and he tried to rape her, and no one would believe her if she said Brian Kelly tried to rape her.
“What are you doing here if you don’t want to be an actress?” He looked startled, his offer to her was not going well, and he didn’t have time to waste here. He thought he’d have a little fun with one of the students before he left.
“I want to be a screenwriter, and earn it, not give blow jobs to be successful,” she said, and with that, before he could stop her, she unlocked the dressing room door, and ran out, leaving the door open, as he hurriedly manipulated his penis back into his pants. It was already soft by then. He walked into the hallway and glanced around, looking for the exit. The tactic worked well for him in Hollywood and rarely failed. These young intellectual idealists were idiots, and he had no time to waste on them. He was frowning when he found his guide provided by the university, along with two professors who were honored to meet him.
“How did the meet and greet go?” one of them asked him. He’d been in the dressing room with them for longer than expected.
“Kids aren’t what they used to be,” he said, frowning, “or you’re feeding them a lot of crap here. They all want to make indie films. They’ll never amount to a hill of shit with them. They don’t know what success is or what you have to do to get it. They’ll end up a bunch of car parkers and waiters, and they won’t be making movies or winning Oscars.” He glanced at his watch then, and stepped up his pace. “Come on, I’ll be late for my plane.”