This Will Only Hurt a Little(51)

I liked working with the Wayans for the most part. I was sometimes leery of the comedy, like the sleepover blow-job scene, but they really tried to make it feel like everyone on set was now part of an extended family. I was especially impressed with Jennifer Carpenter, who was fresh out of Juilliard and starring on Broadway in The Crucible with Laura Linney. She was so committed and prepared every day and really went for it in every scene. When we showed up to do the now-infamous scene where we’re driving in the car and changing the song from Vanessa Carlton to Biggie Smalls, she had memorized THE ENTIRE RAP SONG. I was astonished—I had just learned the chorus, the part I knew would be used in the movie. She and I ended up spending a lot of time in our trailers watching DVDs of old movies while Shawn and Marlon sat through their four hours of prosthetic makeup every day.

I was so relieved when Craig finally came to visit. We ran around Vancouver together, spending my per diem eating at nice restaurants and getting drunk on wine. We went up into the mountains and hiked. On his last day, we were hanging out in my hotel apartment, watching TV before his car was coming to take him to the airport. The two things that always seemed to be on Canadian TV were That ’70s Show and ice-skating. That morning, it happened to be ice-skating. We sat there, tangled on the couch together, hungover from the night before and watched as a ridiculous package about one of the skaters played. It seemed like a parody, the story was so dramatic and insane. I looked at Craig and laughed.

“This feels like a Ben Stiller movie,” I said. “Doesn’t it?”

“Ha! Totally or like Will Ferrell!”

“They should do an ice-skating movie! Like the two of them have to skate together for some reason. The first male-male skating team in the Olympics.”

Craig sat up and we laughed and talked about the idea for the next thirty minutes before he had to go, hashing out the plot to a ridiculous movie about Will Ferrell and Ben Stiller ice-skating together. Before he left, we agreed we should write it together. It would be so much fun. I loved Craig’s ideas, and I always thought I had really good ones, too. I just had never written a script before. Plus, it would be something we could do together. Shooting White Chicks had made me want to create my own stuff. My ideas for dumb movies were just as good as this dumb idea.

The next morning at work, I pitched the ice-skating movie to Keenen, who had made it known that he was always open to hearing any pitches from anyone. He liked it, but said he didn’t think it was for them but that I should for sure work on it. That night, after work, I was excited to talk to Craig. I had come up with more ideas of funny scenes and characters for the movie. He answered on the second ring.

“So, I told Keenen and he doesn’t think it’s for them,” I said, “but I did pitch it to Mark, and he thinks we should just write it as a spec and then take it to those guys, but he was super into it too—”

“Yeah, actually,” he said, “that’s what I wanted to talk to you about. . . . I told Jeff about the movie idea and he’s super excited and . . . he wants to write it with us too!!”

At the end of the sentence he slipped into his weird cartoon voice, presumably because it was what he used when he knew what he was about to say would be unpleasant for me. I paused, stung and hurt that he didn’t want to just do this with me. Clearly, I wasn’t enough; I never was. I didn’t know what to say, but I knew I wanted to do it anyway, with or without Jeff.

“Oh. Okay—I guess.”

“Here! He wants to talk to you!”

I heard shuffling as Craig handed the phone over to his brother.

“Hey,” Jeff said tentatively. “So listen. I know you guys wanted to do this but—I mean this, this is a really good idea. I don’t think you guys understand how good.”

I did actually understand how salable the idea was, but I let Jeff continue to mansplain to me how Craig and I weren’t prepared to write a feature script since it wasn’t something the two of us had ever done, and how since he had (albeit unsold spec scripts that weren’t getting his foot in any doors), he would be the perfect person to help us in the very-difficult-to-figure-out script-writing process. I was resigned immediately. I knew there was no sense arguing that I wanted to do it with just the two of us. Craig wanted his brother involved. They had clearly discussed this. I had no choice but to suck it up.

“Okay. Yeah. That makes sense. Well, I’m home in a week and I have like, almost three weeks off for Christmas so we can all work on it then, in L.A. and in Arizona over the break!”

? ? ?

I did my best to get on board with the idea. I loved Jeff, I really did. He was really smart and talented and I was sure he would be really helpful in structuring the script and fleshing out the story.

I registered the idea with the WGA, something that I had been told was a good idea to do, especially when something is such a good idea. I bought an updated version of Final Draft Pro for us, the screenwriting software, since I was the only one who could afford it. I finished up my work on White Chicks the next week and headed back to Los Angeles, excited to see my friends and Craig and work on the movie idea. Craig and Jeff wanted to go get beers at our favorite dive bar to celebrate my coming home. We went to a place called St. Nicks on Third Street, a no-frills sports pub where the beers were cheap, and if you got too drunk, the burger wasn’t bad. We settled into a booth, the boys sitting across from me. Craig gave me a weird nervous smile and said, “Soooooo. I know we said we’d wait but we just got so excited and—”