Andrew Vachss - Only Child

Michelle stayed next to him, one hand on his arm, steering him over to me as I stood up to greet him.

“Mr. Chenowith...The Vision,” she made the introduction.

“Vision!” I said, extending my hand.

He took it, returning my moderate squeeze with a firm one of his own. His palm was as dry as statistics.

“Sit down, sit down,” I said, indicating the best chair in the room.

“Thanks, Mr.—”

“Stan, please. It’s me who’s honored to meet you, Vis...Can I call you ‘Vision’?”

“Yeah, sure. It’s my...it’s my name, for professional purposes.”

“It has real strength,” I congratulated him. “And, from what I’ve heard, it’s a perfect fit, too.”

“You’ve never seen my work, is that right, Mr....Stan?”

“Not a single frame of your reel,” I assured him. “But that’s...Ah, excuse me, I’m a little excited. Would you like something to drink?”

“Sure. Whatever you’re—”

“When you’re with us, Vision, it’s whatever you want. Danielle...”

Rejji sashayed over, bent forward just enough to show off a little, said, “What can I get you, sir?” to him.

“Uh...vodka rocks.”

“Yes, sir. Is Absolut all right?”

“Sure,” he said.

“I’ll have what The Vision is having,” I told her.

Michelle handed me a sheaf of papers, FedEx’ed over from Lloyd’s office, tapping one spot on the top page with a red talon.

“I don’t want to put any pressure on you,” I told him, “but I don’t want to insult you by not putting real cards on the table, either. As Alana just reminded me, we’re looking for a three-picture commitment.”

“A three-picture...?”

“With escalators, of course,” I assured him. “But you can understand why we don’t want to commit substantial development money to you if you’re free to just walk after the first one.”

“But you haven’t—”

“This isn’t about what you’ve done; it’s about what you’re going to do. Do you know what Hollywood runs on, Vision? Buzz! And you’ve got it going on. You’re all over it. The word’s out. Hot hot hot . Don’t get me wrong. We’ll want to see everything. But it’s not your reel that’s driving the car, it’s your concept, are you with me?”

“I didn’t realize word got out so—”

“This business is all about high-stakes gambling. Today becomes yesterday like that !” I said, snapping my fingers. “The winning bettors are the ones who can see tomorrow .”

Rejji put down coasters, handed us our drinks. I took out a red box of Dunhills, offered it to him. He took one, gratefully. Rejji reached in her apron, caught my slight shake of the head just in time. I wanted to see if he had his own lighter, and if a cigarette would calm him a little.

Yes. To both.

“So,” I said. “Tell me all about your concept.”

“Mr. Chenowith...” Michelle, pointing to the papers.

“All right, Alana,” I said to her. “It’s up to you,” I said to the target. “Do you want to see our offer first?”

“Well...”

“This is really just boilerplate,” I told him. “The blank spaces are where the numbers get filled in. I mean, some things are industry-standard, five points on the gross, separate card for the director’s credit.... You’re a writer-director, yes?”

“Absolutely. The way I—”

“Look, Vision, I won’t jerk you around. I’ve got a ceiling. A limit I can go to. But I promise you, promise you, that if your concept is as revolutionary as we’ve heard it is you’ll hit that ceiling. Right in this very contract. Fair enough?”

“I...I’d have to...”

“Well, of course, your people would have to look it over. I’m not a lawyer, either. My game’s finance; your game’s creativity. But that’s a marriage, am I right? Financing and creativity? That’s the way movies get made.”

“But when you said Blair Witch, I thought you—”

“You thought we were looking ultra-low-budget?” I said, in disbelief. “No way ! I mean, look, I won’t deny that this is a business. We’re here to make money. But we know you have to bring some to get some. Our company can’t finance some hundred-million-dollar spectacle . And we don’t want to. We were thinking of a moderate investment. Say, two and a half to, maybe, four. All on digital.”

“That’s...”

“What? Not enough? Listen to me, Vision. It’s more than enough, believe me. We’ve got the distribution contacts, the overseas market—this isn’t some straight-to-video pitch I’m making here.”

“No. I mean, that could be...it could be plenty, if it was handled right.”

“Take the contracts with you,” I told him. “But, first, tell me about your concept. Tell me everything . So we can fill in some of those blanks.”

“My inspiration,” he said, leaning back, “my original inspiration was seeing one of those convenience-store holdups on videotape—not a re-enactment, the actual robbery—on one of those surveillance cameras they keep in those stores? I was struck by the... immediacy of it.”

He leaned forward to light another cigarette, then leaned back again for the first drag, keeping the interviewer on “Pause,” just as he’d rehearsed it in front of his mirror a thousand times.

Rejji came over, removed his near-empty tumbler, and deftly replaced it with a fresh drink, giving him a little extra wiggle, now that it was clear he was a VIP for real.

“There’s a power to that kind of...performance,” he intoned. “An impact never duplicated in conventional cinema. I became a kind of connoisseur of the entire...genre, if you will. There was something about those tapes that was absolutely special. Unique. So I decided to deconstruct the tapes as a totality. Not in the formal sense, of course,” he said, breezily, “more in the way of disassembling the mechanism...isolating the elements to understand the gestalt.

“From that work came my vision,” he said, in the solemnly portentous tone a pop star uses when explaining that global warming isn’t a cool thing.

“And your name,” I said, saluting him with an upraised glass.

“That wasn’t until later,” he corrected me. “Those surveillance tapes, the closest label you could put on them, artistically, would be a kind of cinéma vérité . But they’re not actually creations; they’re not even documentaries. Why? Because there’s no control —the filmmaker isn’t directing; it’s nothing more than the camera itself. Now, for some, that is the goal...to make the director disappear, so that the audience ‘sees’ directly into the life. But without control, there is no art. You might capture something fantastic on tape, but that’s just a question of being in the right place at the right time. That’s not art. It’s not even skill. Just dumb luck. The Zapruder film is world-famous, right? A piece of history. But nobody ever talks about his...gift. Or his art. And,” he said, in a tone of finality, “he never made anything else.”

“But you can’t direct real life,” I said, gently fanning the flame.

“No?” he said complacently.

“Well, how could you?” I asked. “I mean, if you direct it, then it’s...acting.”

“That’s what I thought, too,” he said, his voice getting tumescent with confidence. He segued into full lecture mode. “I remember watching that robbery tape. Over and over. Thinking how much better it could have been if they’d positioned themselves differently. Or said different words. Because just because something’s real doesn’t mean it’s even interesting. Much less art. That’s when I began scripting. Before that, all my work was just... filming . Without any real...vision,” he said, chuckling at himself. He shifted his shoulders, positioning himself to deliver another dose of insight. “For a while, I did straight vérité . Have you ever seen a dogfight?”