The Autobiography of Benjamin Abbott - Chapter 4: The Reply
“Here we are.”
“Yes, here we are.”
I was sitting across from Humphrey again. It was ten in the morning. The bite-sized Snickers/Milky Ways had been replaced by bite-sized Three Musketeers and Mars Bars.
“Have you picked out a new car yet?”
“What happened to the old one?”
“I’m sure a new car is far down the list of things you plan to buy. What’s first? A house, a new laptop, a nice vacation in Hawaii.”
“Yeah, the offer.” I took a Three Musketeers from the porcelain dish and bit into it. I was wrong. It was a Milky Way. “I’ve been thinking about the offer.”
“That’s good.” Humphrey was imitating my stepdad again with his condescendingly encouraging manner.
“It is quite a generous offer, and I am deeply grateful for it, and I’m flattered that you like my screenplay, but…”
“But?”
“This story, it’s so close to my heart, it’s such an important part of me. I spent so long working on it…” (A weekend, I think.) “…I just don’t know if I can give it up so easily.”
“You got another offer.” Humphrey stopped being my stepdad, he was a CEO again and smiled his salesman’s smile.
“No, it’s not the money. I know this is a cliché and all, but I think what I really want to do is direct.” I popped the second half of the Milky Way into my mouth.
“Oh.” Humphrey’s face deflated under his still inflated hair. We entered one of our lulls as he tried to pump himself back up. I could see his cheeks go from thin to medium to full the way a bike tire inflates when one is using a slightly rusty old hand pump. It was a good lull. It lasted a minute.
“Are you sure you want to direct, it’s a lot of fucking work, early mornings, late nights, constant complaints and harassment, and just between you and me most directors are lunatics, nah, you don’t want that.”
“Yes, I do.”
Humphrey took in more air, he was in danger of bursting from over-inflation.
“Do you have any experience behind the camera?”
“Absolutely none.” I said this with a wide smile.
“Not even in high school or college, AV club, anything like that.”
“Nope.”
Humphrey stood up abruptly and turned to his floor to ceiling window. There wasn’t any blue light at this time of day. He looked over the city, down at all the little ants below, trying to recreate the impression from when I first walked in the day before. Or maybe this was the pose he actually used when he was thinking deeply over a problem. Some people go for long walks. David Humphrey looks down on the city like he’s Napoleon inspecting the battlements.
He turned to me, suddenly full of confidence, “I think I can see it. The script is already so visual it’s a natural fit. Of course, we’d put a veteran producer on the film, someone with experience to make sure everything runs smoothly.”
“I want my brother to produce.” (Point of fact: I don’t have a brother.)
“Oh.” Humphrey held the ‘Oh’ a little too long, letting out too much air, his cheeks were back to medium on their way to thin.
“So, uh, do you have anybody in mind for the lead roles?”
“I think I want to go with all unknowns.”
“You mean people from television?”
“No. Complete unknowns. Fresh faces. Maybe a little theater experience.”
“Theater actors?” Humphrey spat the words. He closed his eyes and put his forehead into the vice of his left hand, his thumb on one temple, his index and middle fingers on the other temple. He massaged his temples as he thought out loud.
“Okay. I can see the kid as an unknown, there aren’t that many famous kid actors anyway, and the blind nanny, we can give that to some old Broadway legend, but the part of the recovering alcoholic father, that would be a movie star, right?”
“A star of the theater.” My hand moved across the open air like I was unveiling a marquee.
“Who has also been in films.”
“Who has never been in a film.”
“So you have someone in mind?”
“No.”
Humphrey was staring at me like I stared at the chimp the day before. I could have played Ping-Pong with his eyeballs and he wouldn’t have noticed. Then I heard a loud growl. I thought it was my stomach. I hadn’t had breakfast, my regular bowl of maple and brown sugar oatmeal, because I didn’t want to eat before our big meeting and now my stomach was letting me know it wasn’t happy about the change in the daily schedule.
But it wasn’t my stomach. There was another rumble. It must be Humphrey’s stomach. I peered at his slim for a 55-year-old belly. The third rumble didn’t come from that belly, or it did, but it came from his mouth, too. It was a laugh. The kind that movie villains let out right before they kill someone, or maybe right after they kill someone, either way there’s usually death involved. I was getting a little worried as it grew louder, hoping the receptionist or his next appointment would come in and save me. I could see red flames in the window behind Humphrey where there used to be blue light.
“Well, Ben,” he said much too loudly, “you certainly drive a hard bargain. But you’re an artist, I respect that. I may be crazy, but I think we have a deal here.” He had called my bluff.
I bit my top lip. It’s a nervous habit. Then I grimaced like Grimace and gave him the bad news. “Mr. Humphrey…”
“Please, Dave.”
“Dave. The offer, it’s flattering, it’s awfully kind of you, but the more I think about it, the more I wonder if now is the right time for The Legend of Sparkles & Timmy: The Emerging.”
“What?”
“I think the cultural climate is wrong for it right now. I don’t think the subtleties of the work will be completely understood. And honestly, I’m not so sure I can let it become a movie.”
“But you wrote it as a screenplay.”
“Yes, I did. There’s no denying that.”
“Are you selling it to someone else?”
“Like I said before, no.”
“C’mon, who’s on to you? Fox? Disney?”
“Just you, Dave.”
“Then why won’t you sell?” Humphrey’s ping pong ball eyes showed incomprehension at my incomprehensible rationale. They were pleading with me to make even a little bit of sense.
“I guess I’m not the kind of person who rushes into major decisions.”
“Okay. Okay.” This he could work with. “I’ll tell you what, Ben…” I found myself standing up and walking like I did the day before, nodding along with Humphrey as he showed me to his office door. “It’s an important decision, I understand that. And maybe a day wasn’t long enough to think about it. How about I give you a few more days, a week, how about a week, think it over, think of the nice new car you’ll be driving and the new clothes you can afford and the women, don’t forget about the women, Ben. And then we’ll come back on Monday and talk about it again and see what your decision is. Does that sound like a plan?” He slapped me on the back so hard one of my fillings came loose.
I had to give it to him. He certainly didn’t take ‘no’ for an answer. I’d always taken ‘no’ for an answer my entire life. It seems like the polite sort of thing to do. But not Humphrey, I guess that’s why he was running the company and I was in the mailroom.
“It certainly does, Dave.” I had no choice. I agreed to his plan.