Beautiful Ruins (48)

“Yes,” Pasquale said.

The woman looked around and then squeezed Pasquale’s arm. “Please. Come with me. There is someone who would like very much to talk to you.”





9

The Room



Recently



Universal City, California





The Room is everything. When you are in The Room, nothing exists outside. The people hearing your pitch could no more leave The Room than choose to not orgasm. They MUST hear your story. The Room is all there is.



Great fiction tells unknown truths. Great film goes further. Great film improves Truth. After all, what Truth ever made $40 million in its first weekend of wide release? What Truth sold in forty foreign territories in six hours? Who’s lining up to see a sequel to Truth?



If your story improves Truth, you will sell it in The Room. Sell it in The Room and you’ll get The Deal. Get The Deal and the world awaits like a quivering bride in your bed.



—From chapter 14 of The Deane’s Way: How I Pitched Modern Hollywood to America and How You Can Pitch Success Into Your Life Too, by Michael Deane





In The Room, Shane Wheeler feels the exhilaration Michael Deane promised. They are going to make Donner! He knows it. Michael Deane is his Mr. Miyagi and he has just waxed the car. Michael Deane is his Yoda and he has just raised the ship from the muck. Shane did it. He’s never felt so invigorated. He wishes Saundra could’ve been here to see it, or his parents. He might have been a little nervous in the beginning, but he’s never been as sure of anything as he is of this: he killed that pitch.

The Room is suitably quiet. Shane waits. It is old Pasquale who speaks first, pats Shane on the arm, and says, “Penso è andata molto bene.” I think that went very well.

“Grazie, Mr. Tursi.”

Shane glances around the room. Michael Deane is totally inscrutable, but Shane isn’t sure that human expression is even possible anymore on his face. He does look to be deep in thought, though, his wrinkly hands crossed in front of his smooth face, his index fingers raised like a steeple before his lips. Shane looks hard at the man: is one of his brows higher than the other? Or is it just fixed that way?

Then Shane glances to Michael Deane’s right, where Claire Silver has the strangest look on her face. It could be a smile (she loves it!) or a grimace (God, is it possible she hated it?), but if he had to name it he might go with pained bemusement.

Still no one speaks. Shane starts to wonder if maybe he’s misread The Room—all of last year’s self-doubt creeping back in—when . . . a noise comes from Claire Silver. A humming through her nose, like a low motor starting. “Cannibals,” she says, and then she loses it—full, out-of-control, breathless laughter: high, manic, and chirping, and she puts a hand out toward Shane. “I— I’m sorry, it’s not— I just— It’s—” And then she gives in to the laughter; she dissolves in it.

“I’m sorry,” Claire says when she can talk again, “I am. But—” And now the laughter peals again, somehow goes higher. “I wait three years for a good movie pitch . . . and when I get it, what’s it about? A cowboy”—she covers her mouth to try to stop the laughter—“whose family gets eaten by a fat German.” She doubles over.

“He’s not a cowboy,” Shane mumbles, feeling himself shrinking, shriveling, dying. “And we wouldn’t show the cannibalism.”

“No, no, I’m sorry,” Claire says, breathless now. “I’m sorry.” She covers her mouth again and squeezes her eyes shut but she can’t stop laughing.

Shane sneaks a peek at Michael Deane, but the old producer is just staring off, deep in thought, as Claire snorts through her nose—

And Shane feels the last of the air leave his body. He’s two-dimensional now—a flat drawing of his crushed self. This is how he’s felt the last year, during his depression, and he sees now that it was foolish to believe, even for a minute, that he could muster his old ACT confidence—even in its new, humbler form. That Shane is gone now, dead. A veal cutlet. He mutters, “But . . . it’s a good story,” and looks at Michael Deane for help.

Claire knows the rule: no producer ever admits to not liking a pitch, just in case it sells somewhere else and you end up looking like an idiot for passing. You always come up with some other excuse: The market isn’t right for this, or It’s too close to something else we’re doing, or if the idea is truly awful, It just isn’t right for us. But after this day, after the last three years, after everything—she just can’t help herself. All of her gagged responses to three years of ludicrous ideas and moronic pitches gush out in teary, breathless laughter. An effects-driven period thriller about cowboy cannibals? Three hours of sorrow and degradation, all to find out the hero’s son is . . . dessert?

“I’m sorry,” she gasps, but she can’t stop laughing.

I’m sorry: the words seem finally to snap Michael Deane out of some trance. He shoots a cross look at his assistant and drops his hands from his chin. “Claire. Please. That’s enough.” Then he looks at Shane Wheeler and leans forward on his desk. “I love it.”

Claire laughs a few more times, dying sounds. She wipes the tears from her eyes and sees that Michael is serious.