Boss Lady (17 page)

Tracy said, “I know, but at least we can have some of these people as the base of what we need from the roles. I mean, I could have this girl Shannon coach whoever else would play the role from a Hollywood perspective, because she really understands it. But do we really want a Hollywood perspective at all?”

“Do you want Hollywood money?” Robin asked her.

“Do we?” Tracy questioned herself. “Because if we shoot this film right, it becomes a cult classic that these urban girls, who have read the book ten times each, will buy on DVD to watch over and over again. But if we do it the Hollywood way and it becomes just another vehicle for B-level stars, then it gains a little more exposure up front just to lose that cult following. Because the
Flyy Girl
readers would recognize the Hollywoodization of the story and not like it as much.”

“Or, these B-level stars could become A-level by giving a great performance here that becomes their springboard for other roles,” Robin argued. “So you still achieve the cult following that you want, with real up-and-coming stars who can always make reference to the film, like with Ice Cube, Laurence Fishburne, Cuba Gooding Jr., Morris Chestnut, and Nia Long in
Boyz n the Hood.
You see what I mean? Let's just make sure we mix it up.”

Tracy said, “Oh, well, you know that's gonna happen. This is only the preliminary castings. There are real stars I want to go after, including Lynn Whitfield to play my mother.”

Robin said, “Well, I also don't think we need to go to a bunch of different cities, looking for more unknown people. I mean, this is a Philadelphia movie, right? We're going to end up shooting it here, so I would use all of the people that we can use right here, and fly in the other performers that we'll need. Because you're giving yourself a bigger workload and spending more casting money when you don't need to.”

Tracy said, “But the casting calls would spread the excitement for the film on a national level to make producers want to get in bed with us on it.”

Robin said, “Tracy, we can do that with a good P.R. firm.”

“What about the opportunities to sell my Flyy Girl Ltd. merchandise?”

“Oh, girl, you'll have plenty of time to do that. The Flyy Girl name will never stop being popular. You came ready-made with a brand name.”

Robin had some good points. All I did was listen.

Tracy then looked at me, with the last of a turkey hoagie in my mouth.

She asked me, “Vanessa, what do you think?”

I was caught off guard by it. I nodded my head and pointed to Robin.

I mumbled “She's right” through my food.

Tracy nodded back to me. She said, “Okay, let's get back to work then. We need to narrow this talent down.”

I was still munching on my food, so I stayed put a little longer.

“Those hoagies hit the spot, don't they?” someone asked me.

I looked to my right and spotted Shamor with his camera gear. He was smiling at me.

I smiled back and nodded to him. “I grew up on cheesesteaks and hoagies,” I told him. “I'm from here.”

He said, “I know. I was wondering if you could take me around to show me some places.”

I paused for a minute. Was he asking me out? I thought he was hollering at Madison.

I said, “Yeah, we could all hang out together, if we get out of here early enough. I know I was worn out from yesterday.”

I wanted to see how he would respond to a group situation.

He hesitated before he said, “Tell me about it. But ah . . .”

His look said it all. The boy was feeling me. He was trapped in his words while watching me eat. And I was so hungry that I didn't even care. I was just going to have to be a food mouth. I wasn't there to impress anybody. I was there to get a job done. But no wonder he was so eager to talk to me the night before. Maybe he was feeling me more than he was feeling my friend. Or he could have been running game on both of us. I didn't really know him, so what was I to think.

He said, “Well, we'll talk later. It's time to get back to work.”

He smiled at me again and returned to his camera station.

I tried to hurry up with my food to get back to work myself. And as soon as I looked around the room from eating, I caught Maddy staring at me. I wondered immediately how long she had been watching me and if she had caught my brief conversation with Shamor. I figured that she had. But it didn't bother me. I wasn't there to meet guys. She could have him.

*  *  *

After a while I knew exactly what we were looking for in each
Flyy Girl
character. Not that I didn't have my own ideas already, but through the casting call, I was learning how to see through Tracy and Robin's eyes.

Of course, the lead role of
TRACY
had to really work the film, but the lead of
VICTOR
needed to be even stronger.
VICTOR
had to outmatch
TRACY
's wit immediately. It was similar to the superhero and the villain in an action movie.
VICTOR
had to be a scene snatcher for us to believe that
TRACY
would fall head over heels for him. We all had to fall for him for it to work.

We had a guy from Washington, D.C., named Mark Fletcher, who really did it for me. He had smooth, dark brown skin, with dark, curly hair, and had an amazing presence about him. He knew that he was special even when he stood still. And when he performed for us, he presented an abundance of swagger, just what the role needed. There were plenty of other guys who worked magic as
VICTOR
as well, but Mark Fletcher was definitely my leading pick.

For the roles of
MERCEDES
and
RAHEEMA,
we were looking for girls who could play solid opposites, but also have some similarities in appearance and attitude. They were both Catholic school sisters from the same household, who felt oppressed by a tough-as-nails father, and a soft-as-a-feather mother. They just responded to their emotions differently. And to tell the truth, there were so many people we saw who could fit in either one of those roles, that I figured they would be better cast to professionals who could help sell the film for us. So I agreed totally with Robin on that one. It wasn't as if someone could ask for a potful of money for the co-starring roles. However, there was a good amount of beef on the bone in both parts that could really move a person's career forward. You would definitely have important screen time. So it was worth a shot for us to go after a few known names and faces for those roles.

For the parents—
PATTI, DAVE, BETH,
and
KEITH
—the opportunities were wide open. We could cast known names and faces, or a mix of the two. Tracy definitely had some Hollywood folks in mind for the parents. Nevertheless, we selected a few talents who fit the model that Tracy was looking for. They had to look thirty-five, have believable chemistry, and basically fit their prospective families. And even
though Tracy was forced to kill their backstories for the screenplay, the
Flyy Girl
book gave all of the information that a person would need on how to portray the parents.

For the girlfriend roles of
JANTEL
and
CARMEN,
Tracy thought of using a real high-school track star, either locally or nationally, and a nationally known video girl.

“Some of these rap video girls are getting extremely popular nowadays. And they all want to act,” she commented. “So we just grab one of them from BET to play
CARMEN
. They just have to look young enough and deliver their lines.”

For the boyfriends—
BRUCE, TIMMY, CASH
, and
CARL
—the opportunities were endless.
BRUCE
was clean-cut and straightforward.
TIMMY
was criminalistic and violent.
CASH
was a charismatic hustler. And
CARL
was a college jock.

Then you had
KIWANA
and her
COLLEGE GIRLS,
all of
VICTOR'S CREW,
and a hundred smaller roles that needed to be filled, mostly by Philadelphians.

“This'll shape up to be a grand-scale movie with all of the extras you have in this thing,” Robin stated.

Tracy smiled. She said, “But that was the eighties. It seemed like we had a larger teenaged population back then, didn't it? Nowadays, a lot of kids stay in the house more, doing whatever. But we were out and about during the eighties. I want to represent that extroverted personality of the original hip-hop generation in this film. I mean, that's what being flyy was all about in the eighties, being seen out at the parties.”

Robin grinned and said, “You got that right. Kangol hats, fat shoelaces, and graffiti.”

There were plenty of ways for everyday people to be seen in this
Flyy Girl
movie, that was for sure. We even looked at little boys from ages six to ten to play
JASON
as the kid brother. Could you imagine watching a gang of cute, brown boys who were all learning to memorize lines? It was just too much. Then I looked over at Alexandria, who had fallen for the grown-up Jason, and I knew that she was in big trouble. She was standing there watching plenty of gorgeous little boys, one of which would be selected to star as
JASON
in the film, while she got to talk to, and possibly date, the real thing.

I shook my head, grinned it off, and wondered about it. I didn't sweat my cousin Jason at all, but I could see now how a girl could fall for him. I never said that he was bad-looking. He was just . . .
ill,
my cousin.

*  *  *

That second day at Freedom Theater wasn't as bad as the first. We got out of there by seven o'clock instead of nine.

On our limo ride back to our hotel rooms at the Marriott, Robin asked Tracy, “So, who do you have on your short list to direct this film? You know, Chuck Stone from those ‘Whassup?' Budweiser commercials is from the Philadelphia area. He's getting serious looks from Hollywood right now, and he's still inexpensive. And I hear the video director Benny Boom is starting to look at scripts now, too. He's from the Philadelphia area as well.”

Tracy said, “We don't necessarily have to have a director from Philadelphia. I mean, they're still going to be getting most of the information from me. I wrote the script and I'll be a part of the whole process. We just need good camerawork.”

It was already understood that Tracy would be a co-producer on the film. She was used to producing now, and was already setting things in motion. So Robin began to smile real wide as other ideas ran through her mind. I had a feeling I knew what she was going to ask Tracy next, but I waited for it to come out of her mouth before I jumped the gun on it.

She said, “Knowing you and your reputation, I wouldn't be surprised if you tried to direct this movie yourself. No one is going to know what you're trying to get across more than you do. And you're right, you're the total visionary on this film.”

“That's a great idea,” Jasmine butted in. “I can see you directing this, Tracy.”

Tracy gave my girl a look to shut her big mouth. Jasmine read it and did just that.

Tracy said, “As much as I hate to say it, Robin, I wouldn't want to turn this film into a chick flick by me getting too involved with it. I mean, you know how people get. Too much of my involvement may have ruined my last two films. And I still view
Flyy Girl
as more of an
eighties story than just a girl's story. It's a representation of all of us, guys and girls.”

Robin said, “But you still have to figure that
we,
black women and
girls
in particular, never get a chance to tell our own stories. I mean, what are we looking at—
The Color Purple, Waiting to Exhale,
and
What's Love Got to Do with It.
They were all based on books, written by black women but directed by men. Even Oprah Winfrey used a male director when she produced Toni Morrison's
Beloved.
I still felt she should have used Julie Dash from
Daughters of the Dust,
but what do I know about a black woman's perspective? I'm only a black woman. And none of those films dealt with the young, urban girls of our era.”

Robin was in her early thirties, like Tracy. They were both first generation hip-hoppers.

Robin said, “We need a
Flyy Girl
movie right now more than anything. This is perfect timing. And it would be great for a woman to direct it. That's all I'm saying. I mean, look at all of those black male movies we've had over the years:
Boyz n the Hood, Juice, Menace II Society, South Central, New Jack City, Friday
and
Next Friday, Straight Out of Brooklyn, The Inkwell, The Wood . . .”

I cut Robin off and said, “We had
Love and Basketball.”

She looked at me and said, “Thank you, Vanessa. And what is that, one movie out of twenty?”

“It had a woman director, too,” Maddy added. “What about if you got her to direct
Flyy Girl
?”

Tracy said, “But she was very close to that story.”

“Just like you're very close to yours,” Robin commented.

Tracy shook her head and said, “I'm not even gonna talk about it anymore.”

For a minute, everyone sat silently. Then we all started laughing. There was no way in the world Tracy was not going to talk about her movie. It was a ridiculous comment to make. But we all understood why she had said it. It was a lot to think about.

Robin asked, “Well, what does Mr. Omar Tyree have to say about your script?”

Tracy said, “He hasn't seen it yet.”

“Are you planning on showing it to him?”

“Eventually. But I didn't want too many different opinions about the screenplay on my first draft. I just wanted to write it as I saw it first. He doesn't have any screenwriting credits anyway, and I do.”