Boss Lady (44 page)

Suddenly, I couldn't wait to get the hell out of there. I had nothing else to say about it.

When we got ready to walk out of his office, after another thirty-five minutes of worthless chatter about other film projects, everyone was peachy and cordial.

“Well, call around and see how many people you can get involved,” Louis advised Susan.

“Oh, we'll stay busy on it,” she promised him.

Louis smiled in my direction and said, “Oh, with Vanessa T. involved in the project, I'm sure you will. I'm sure she'll find a way to get it done.”

I was cordial myself, so I smiled back at him and nodded with no comment.

Then he looked over at my cousin.

He said, “With all three of you on the job, there's no way in the world that it won't get done.”

It just won't get done here,
I thought to myself.

*  *  *

We walked out of the studio building toward our cars in the parking lot, and Tracy and Susan were all over me with praise.

“You did good in there,” Tracy told me.

“Yeah, you'll have no problem holding your own out here,” Susan added.

I was surprised by it. I figured my little temper tantrum was unprofessional. But they were both cheesing away.

“You don't think he took offense to me getting in his face like I did?” I asked them.

Tracy said, “Not at all. You see what he said about it. He was impressed by you. And you stayed with the facts.”

“Yeah, that's the most important part. If you're going to make a stand, then make sure you make a stand with the facts, and you leave the other opinions at home,” Susan told me.

I nodded and assessed the meeting for myself.

I asked, “So is that the typical Hollywood meeting? You go in and exchange niceties, talk a little about your project, and then talk a lot about everything else that they're doing?”

The rest of the meeting was all about what Wide Vision Films was up to.

Susan spoke up first. She said, “You have to understand that every studio we take a meeting with will have their own projects on the table and other projects they're thinking about doing before we even reach their door. And every executive understands that buzz is buzz, so they'll talk you up about their projects, and their stars, and the things they would like to do because word of mouth always leads to more business.”

Tracy looked at me and nodded in agreement.

She said, “I usually don't allow them to stray too far from what I want to talk about. But after two failed films at the box office, I have no choice but to listen to them. I still have to find new projects of my own.”

I was beginning to understand things perfectly. When you're hot, the focus is all on you. But when you're not, you have to take whatever conversation you can get. And the only way to be hot was to have something that was out and selling.

As we approached our cars, I asked my cousin, “So what are the sales figures on
Flyy Girl
by now?”

She said, “We're getting close to a million sold now. But the problem is, I still have more girls who like to share the book than buy it. So whenever I bring those numbers to a Hollywood meeting, they're really looking at a
fourth
of the reading audience. However, we all know that plenty more people would be interested in seeing the movie who have never read the book.”

Susan said, “Not only that, but as you've stated yourself, Vanessa,
Flyy Girl
has more of a cult following than a target audience. Tracy has an audience that she hasn't really marketed to. And the difference is that a successful and specific marketing program would create a concentrated platform where the Hollywood execs would be forced to deal with us. But with
Flyy Girl,
you're not dealing with any recent marketing attention, you're dealing with the business as usual of a steadily selling book, and those books generally take much longer to pitch.”

Tracy added, “It's like all of these comic-book movies that Hollywood is so fascinated with now. Comic books have been selling steadily for years, but all of a sudden,
X-Men
works, and now they want to make everything.”

“But you had a specific marketing program with the sequel,
For the Love of Money,”
I reminded my cousin. “And it worked. The book hit the
New York Times
bestseller list, and won an NAACP Image Award.”

“But that was three years ago,” Susan commented.

“Well, maybe we should write another one,” I responded.

Tracy just shook her head as I reached the passenger-side door of her Mercedes.

Susan smiled and said, “That's a thought.”

*  *  *

As Tracy and I returned home in the car, I was in my own world. I was already thinking about the meeting with my crew of girls at the Flyy Girl Ltd. offices in Inglewood. What could we all do to make
Flyy Girl
a hot property within the Hollywood circles? That was all that was on my mind. I didn't have much to say about anything else. I still had a lot of work to do and talk meant nothing.

Tracy looked over at me from the driver's seat. She asked me, “So, how do you think this first meeting went?”

I didn't feel like discussing it. My mind was already in a hundred other places. So I shrugged my shoulders and answered, “It is what it is. I just have to learn how to work it like you did.”

Tracy smirked and grunted, “Hmmph.” She said, “To tell you the truth, I stop and wonder myself sometimes how I made it in Hollywood. It still seems like a dream to me as well.”

I took another look at us cruising in her black convertible Mercedes-Benz out in sunny Los Angeles, California, and I said, “But it's not a dream. This is really your life. You've made it. So I know it can happen.”

Tracy was still unsure. She hesitated a minute. I could see her thinking about telling me something, but she didn't want to. But then she let me have it anyway.

“Everybody's not gonna make it, Vanessa,” she told me. “That's just the reality. And every film is not gonna get made.”

I didn't respond to my cousin. I couldn't. What was I going to say? I had to prove that I would get the film done. There was no other way around it. But I couldn't help myself. I had to respond to her. So I shook my head and eyed Tracy with spiteful intent.

I said, “You've really changed since you've been out here. I never would have thought I'd see the day where you would give up on anything. I always looked up to you because you went for it against the odds, and you came out a winner. But now . . .” I shook my head and looked away from her.

To my surprise, Tracy held her tongue. I felt for sure she would give me a piece of her mind, but she didn't. Or at least not immediately. So after a few minutes of silence, I looked into her face again while she drove. I wanted to see if she really had nothing to say to me.

That's when Tracy smiled. She didn't even look at me when she did it. She kept her eyes glued to the road.

“What's so funny?” I asked her.

She had me just where she wanted me. But I had to pick her brains regardless. I knew she was thinking something. Tracy Ellison Grant was always thinking something.

She shook her head back to me and answered, “Everybody thinks it's that easy. And you know what? It is. Because when you're going through whatever it takes in life for you to be successful, you just get
in a zone. And you feel the burn, but then you don't, because you're too busy doing it.

“Well, I'm not in that zone right now, Vanessa. And everything I do is a lot more painful now,” she told me. “It takes a lot more out of me to fail. So yeah, I'm taking a rest. And I need it.”

She looked me in the eye and said, “But that doesn't mean that you have to take a rest. You're just getting started. So you find that zone for yourself, and whatever you need, I'll help you with it. But for me . . . I think I've challenged myself in enough ways already. And I'll challenge myself again. I know I will. But not today. That's all I'm saying.

“Maybe it's your turn now, Vanessa,” she commented. “So you show the world what you got. And you stop hiding behind me.”

I listened to her with no comment.

She nodded her head and continued. “So yeah, I give you permission to outshine the master now. Break law number one. I'm just curious to see how far you can go with it.”

“So you're putting me in charge now?” I asked her to make sure.

Tracy shook her head. “No. Not hardly. You're putting yourself in charge. And that was the way it was supposed to happen,” she said. “You're following the script, Vanessa. This is your movie now. And your book. I'm just a character in it.”

I heard her, but I didn't believe her. So I started smiling and shaking it off. My cousin was trying to patronize me. It was reverse psychology.

I said, “I haven't done anything to deserve a book. And I surely don't have a movie. I'm just out here trying to get your movie made.”

My cousin smiled at me and said, “We'll see. You need Omar Tyree's number?”

I started laughing. Tracy had turned what could have been a tense moment between us into ridiculous sarcasm.

I said, “Nobody would want to read a book about me. What have I done?”

Tracy said, “No, the real question is, ‘What
could
you do if given the opportunity?' That's what all people want to know. How far will we push ourselves to get what we say we want? And that's what you're doing, Vanessa. You're pushing yourself, you're pushing me, you're
pushing everyone around you. And that's interesting. Because I believe that eventually you're gonna get what you want. And I think people need to see that, from the bottom up.”

I thought about it, and I finally saw my cousin's point. There I was, a little lost black girl from North Philadelphia out there in Hollywood trying to push white folks' buttons into making a film about another little lost black girl from Philadelphia, who just happened to be my big cousin.

Tracy asked me, “You ever heard of Elaine Brown from the Black Panther Party?”

I shook my head. “No. I've heard of Assata Shakur after you told me about her and her book. And Tupac's mother, Afeni Shakur, was a Black Panther. And then Angela Davis.”

Tracy said, “Everybody's heard of Angela Davis.”

“Not everybody,” I argued. There were plenty of people my age who knew nothing about the Black Panther Party.

“Anyway,” Tracy said, “Elaine Brown was from North Philadelphia, too. And she wrote a book called
A Taste of Power
around the same time that my book first came out, in the early nineties. You need to get that and read it. Then you'll see what I'm talking about. It's time for urban black girls to have their stories told on film. You're right about that. And I want to see it happen as much as you do. So I'll give you all of the support you need to make it happen.”

I listened to my cousin and accepted the challenge. It was all up to me now. And that made me a little nervous. Did I really have what it took to get things done? I wasn't even out of school yet.

*  *  *

Once we arrived back home, I got to thinking to myself and brainstorming for the rest of the day. Then I came up with my own poem. Not to say that I could compete with Tracy or anything, but we all had to start somewhere. So I wrote it out in my notepad while stretched out on the bed:

I was driven out of poverty / I was driven out of desire / I was driven out of purpose / I was driven off of need / I was driven by my girls / I was driven by my sisters and mother / And I was driven for the love of the girls in the hood / to make magic shine on us for a change / and then my cousin gave me the key to the car / and told me to take us all to the drive-in / so
that we could watch our movie / with popcorn / and soda / and cherry Twizzlers.

I called it “Driven.” I had written better poems before, but like I said, I couldn't compete with Tracy in the writing department. At least not yet. But “Driven” was what I was feeling at the time, so it was relevant.

Then I got another phone call from Anthony.

I smiled as soon as I heard his voice. I thought guys were supposed to act up once they got some from a girl. Maybe he just needed seconds before he would act up. But his phone calls were flattering while they lasted.

“You can't wait until the end of the week to get at me again, hunh?” I teased him.

He laughed. He said, “Naw, I was just calling to see how things were going with the
Flyy Girl
movie.”

I had forgotten I had even told him about it. I guess I was thinking about having sex with him more than he was.

I said, “Yeah, I can see now that it's gonna take a while to happen, but I'm up for it. We just have to find the right people to attach to it to make it attractive enough for a studio to shoot.”

“Well, good luck on that,” he told me. “Hollywood finds ways to shoot as many silly films as they can for black folks. But when it comes to films that actually mean something . . . This
Flyy Girl
movie would mean something.”

I was surprised he was so interested in it all of a sudden.

I said, “How do you know?”

I was assuming that he was just talking me up and hadn't even read the book.

He said, “I just finished reading it. It was a good fast read with lots of action in it. I think guys would like the movie, too. It had enough edge to it. And all of those girls were going through a lot. I mean,
serious
shit. It's not like a happy-go-lucky white girl movie.
Flyy Girl
is real. And you had a whole lot of criminals in there for guys to play.”

I started laughing. He had no idea how good it made me feel to have him support the idea. I could just kiss him through the phone.